


Scionica

by Rigil_Kentauris



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution Comics Canon
Genre: Conspiracies, Cops, Gen, Role Reversal AU, cop!Pritchard, dark!Sarif Industries, depictions of police violence, francis & quincy as friends (past) but also enemies (present), graphic depiction of physical trauma, hacker!Jensen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23772328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigil_Kentauris/pseuds/Rigil_Kentauris
Summary: [[Role Reversal AU]]Officer Francis Pritchard is not expecting to find an aug in the middle of Detroit. He's not expecting Durant to threaten his job over refusing to shoot said nearly-dead aug.He's *also* really hoping to *never* be involved in a global conspiracy, but. You can tell how his day has been going so far.--(What if Francis was the cop, and Jensen was the long-haired hacker?)
Relationships: Francis Pritchard & Adam Jensen, Francis Pritchard & Quincy Durant, Francis Pritchard v. Quincy Durant
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hoping that posting this will finally help me finish the last little bits! I was steaming along and then, let me TELL you. life happened. life bigly happened.
> 
> anyway pwease mw pwesident go easy on me i wrote this like what two years ago now.
> 
> ANYWAY special thanks to casie-mod who is the whole reason i got off my butt to write this thing in the first place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we last left our heroes... they were not doing anything because this is chapter one and this is more a note to future me to remember to do these in the future.  
> Also Francis probably was having dinner. Maybe a ham sandwich or something. I don't know.
> 
> [[WC 3686]]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an also special thanks to trulycertain for editing this chapter for me!!!!!! any typos left are from when i edited suggestions and managed to mess things up evenr further XD

_Hello world << _

▽

  
  


Who in the _hell,_ he ponders, would want to be a criminal? Especially here. Every usable piece of metal, every piece of furniture, every lightbulb has been scavenged. Ages ago, by the looks of things. There are damp, rotting ceiling tiles lying all over the darkened concrete hallways.

Even the carpet is gone.

Officer Francis Pritchard kicks at a soggy pile of paper. Most of it dissolves over his combat boots. The teamspeak channel lets out a pathetic imitation of human laughter in response, as if to taunt him. He has to stop and bang his helmet a couple of times before the radio even _thinks_ of letting the sound coalesce into something more interpretable.

“I didn’t copy,” he says, cursing mentally at the way the building seems to have started a personal vendetta with the police radio signals.

Muffled glitched out laughter sounds from the rest of the team.

“Oh, nothing!” Special Officer Cavaleri says innocently. “SHHH, guys,” she adds, as if it wasn’t already plain that they must have been talking about him.

“Go fuck yourself,” he says instead, and fumbles around for the radio shut off button.

“Hey, wait, Frank we weren’t-” Cavaleri manages to eke out before he disconnects.

  
  


▽

  
  


It’s been a decent year for the DPD. It’s politics season, which means politicians looking for re-election, which means trafficking is finally down and Electability is up. But hell if Francis is going to be cynical about it. Trafficking was down, B&Es are down despite the weather, even drunk driving’s taken a hit.

‘Course every blessing comes with an equal and opposite curse.

In this case, Durant and his ever-hot head. His ever-ready trigger finger. His idiotic gullibility.

Francis sighs, and pokes his head into another side room. A quick sweep of his LED flashlight reveals nothing spectacular except a plethora of additional emptiness. He’s got no idea what any harvester group in their right minds would be doing in this crapshoot of an abandoned office complex, much less people dangerous enough to warrant shoot to kill orders. Orders issued as mere suggestion and license, of course. Durant was insane, but not that insane. 

He checks the next room, and it’s more of the same. Bad muddled air. Barren concrete. Water damage from the ongoing winter. The next room is the same. Stale air. Papers. Stains. And the next, and the next. He turns on the teamspeak channel again, out of sheer boredom. They’re on a long chain of in-jokes. He turns it off again.

As common sense would dictate, Francis decides, the DRB was calling in false tips about their rivals and wasting police time while they turtled up supplies somewhere dangerous. And Durant was using this as an opportunity to get some boredom out of his system.

It wasn’t working, but there was Durant for you. In a way, it’s become almost a peaceful op. Francis is only a couple floors underground, but the background radiation from Detroit is already gone. The cars, the sirens. The wind. The distant highway with electric autotruck fleets buzzing through the night.

The place is silent, but for water dripping in the stairways. The last room is right beside the stairs, and it’s empty, too. Francis pauses on the landing, not eager to get back to the team. The open stairs stretch dizzyingly high and dizzyingly low, but B3 and whatever lies beneath that is flooded and half finished. Francis leans over the side of the stairs. The metal safety rails have been stolen or else never put in. The water below reflects the white of his LED flashlight back at him. A bit of gravel falls from somewhere high above, hitting the water with a _plink._

Several more pieces of gravel follow. 

The floor rumbles under his feet, and then a massive chunk plummets into the water to the sound of multiple distant detonations. 

He jumps the stairs two at a time and slams his hand against his radio transceiver buttons.

“Sitrep,” he says, getting only pitchy static. “Durant? Cavaleri.”

Gunshots ring out in response. Semi-auto, too many to count. His people just have standard issue handguns. He clips his flashlight back to his belt with shaking hands, and grabs the door to the exit. He shoves but it's stuck. Rust, lack of care, jammed – he’s got no fucking clue. 

“ _Captain,”_ he says, urgently. There’s nothing. His fingers are clumsy in his gloves, the radio buttons hard to reach – stupid design, not functional. He switches frequencies, aiming for the station but he’s gone the wrong way. 

He lets go of the door so he can tug his helmet off and stab at the buttons. Now that he can see them, switching to station frequency is easy.

“Dispatch,” he says, tamping down on the rising sense of panic, “This is Officer Pritchard. What the hell is going on?”

“Jth- w- acaasadfhjhkl-” 

Dispatch descends into a slurred mess of sounds as the signal shuts down. He tries to keep a hold on his helmet while he tugs at the jammed door fruitlessly-

It’s only then, somehow, that he realizes. It’s not poor radio reception – it’s jamming. It’s tech. It’s _intention,_ it’s-

Oh, they’re fucked.

They are _fucked._

MCB doesn’t have the kind of tech that could cut through police comms. No how, no way.

He feels cold 

He runs- 

He falls- tripped?-

-and then he’s choking, drowning, knocked off the stairs and underwater by the impact of a close-by explosion. He gasps, and it’s thick water, and he’s choking and, and a second explosion sends shockwaves through the water. He tumbles helplessly, his body slams into a wall. He can’t breathe. He can’t see. He flails furiously among the bubbles, smacks his hand on something and the pain is so sharp he gasps again. 

This time, though, it’s air between his lips, and he’s breathing, and he’s broken the surface of the water. 

He hacks out murky, fetid water and fights through shaky harsh breaths and nearly goes down again when a giant chunk of concrete and rebar crashes down beside him. He looks up, and the stairway is falling apart. Fire flickers in through the blasted open door he’d just been standing next to a moment ago. A moment later, Durant comes tearing down the hallway, jumping the debris and firing calmly.

“D-” Francis tries to call out, having to stop himself from breaking out in a rash of coughing again. “DURANT!”

Durant stumbles midstride, then turns and pokes his head through the door.

“...Really?” Durant says, then disappears.

“HEY,” Francis calls after him, but he can already hear the bootsteps and the shooting fading.

Francis’ helmet is nowhere to be seen. The floorplans don’t show how far down the finished parts of the building go. He’ll probably never see his helmet again.

He tries to steady himself. It’s not easy to do. First he has to trick his shocked body into believing it's going to be fine, then he has to wrangle it into cooperating long enough so he can tread water evenly for a second. 

_Breathe deep. Hold it. Breathe out._

His heart rate is finally slowing when someone screams. It’s loud. It’s tortured. And it’s _not_ coming from upstairs.

Rather, it sounds for all the world like it’s coming from the broken, wrecked floor that Francis is swimming in right now.

So much for calming down.

 _Move,_ he orders himself. _Someone needs you._

▽

  
  


The situation could be better. He unclips his flashlight as he swims over to the nearest half-submerged door. Thankfully, the stairway structure under the waterline is still intact. The hallway beyond looks relatively intact, too. He gets to his feet in the hallway and finds a third thing to be thankful for, that the water only comes up to his thighs. 

“Hello?” he calls down the corridor, trying to sound calm, and gentle. 

The office doors on this level are all still present, moldy and warped. Scavengers hadn’t bothered with them. The building shakes again with an unheard explosion. He gets the sudden image of putting his foot down and falling through some unseen hole.

The only reason his voice is steady is the years of training, right now. The gunshots are no longer audible. The LED light reflecting off the water makes everything seem cold, and even more desolate.

“I’m with the police,” he calls out again. He doesn’t know whether to add _I’m here to help_ or _come out with your hands up._

He sloshes through the water.

No motion. No sound. No open doors anywhere.

“Do you need help?” he tries, calling out quietly this time.

He runs his flashlight over the hall again and stops.

There’s a…

He walks a little closer, and yes. It’s a camera, situated high in the corner, at the very end of the hallway. It’s right above a small metal door blocking the width of the hallway, creating a dead end.

Or a bottleneck.

He reaches a hand up to his ear reflexively to try and contact the squad but his helmet is, of course, at the bottom of hell’s least favorite well.

The camera doesn’t even have dust on it, much less dirt. 

He approaches the door and is surprised to witness it swishing open without his touch. It disappears into the wall. A matching door only a few feet beyond that is open, and leads to abject darkness. The water level, oddly, is much lower beyond the door, and water streams around Francis to try and equalize the situation.

He keeps one hand on the flashlight. The other goes for his pistol.

 _MCB my ass,_ he thinks.

“MCB my ass,” he says out loud, because he can’t let the little foundlings of fear get a headstart on him.

Durant was likely to receive disciplinary action over this clusterfuck, so there was a bright spot to focus on.

His first thought when he walks into the room, confusingly, is whether or not he’s walked into a different dimension. The room is clean and modern. Blue baseboard lights flicker to life as the doors swish closed behind him. And unlike the other rooms, this one is not empty. It has one plain metal desk, and one spartan office chair. There is a door on the other side, opposite the one Francis has just entered, and it looks as clean and spotless as the rest of the walls.

This room _can’t_ be a part of the building he just came out of, so his first thoughts are that of simple confusion. 

He much prefers the first thought. Because the second thought is one of horror.

There is a dead body on the ground, and something awful has been done to it.

Heavy cables lie everywhere, crowding out the floor, endless under Francis’s flashlight beam. They’re tangled on the body’s shirtless back, around him, under him. Smaller wires wind and knot tightly around his limbs, breaking in and out of torn cargo pants. Francis has seen dead men before, but he can’t understand what’s been done here. The cords and cable have been...jammed into the body. Or rather, into black metallic ports burrowed all over the body, with greenish purple bruises ringing every port. 

Francis takes a step forward without meaning to. There are dozens of the ports embedded in the body’s skin. There are least a half-dozen on each of his forearms alone, each connected to their own cable. Another couple dozen or so shoot up and down the sides of his spine in uneven, asymmetric patterns. Bruises blush out so badly that the spine itself is almost a black and green line. Many more ports peek through rough hemmed holes in the man’s pants. 

And then there’s his head. Half his dark, dark hair is long, almost to his waist but done up in a single silky braid twined through with stripped copper and gold wires. The other half of his hair is completely gone. That half of his skull has been replaced by a scratched matte black metal plate, with no artificial skin to conceal it. The paled skin around it is swollen, and spotted with roughed up rash-like abrasions where it meets the metal. 

Francis moves forward in a daze and almost trips over the largest cable. It’s larger than his flashlight, bigger than the body’s thin wrists. It curves lazily through the few centimeters of water on the floor before gently encircling the body’s neck and burrowing into a complicated port at the base of his skull, nearly the size of a fist. 

_Who_ did _this?_

How?

If it’s augmentations – but they _can’t_ be augmentations, Francis thinks. There are far too many for any one person to live with-

Francis stops his train of thought there, feeling ill. Of all the awful ways to die…

The part of his brain that is a cop taps him on the shoulder, and offers its services. He relinquishes with a rush of relief.

Francis kneels beside the body, and brushes some broken glass off a shoulder. The fluorescent light tube in the ceiling has blown out, which might explain the light Francis saw earlier. The cables are warm to the touch, which is…odd.

The head is lying to the side, and he doesn’t want to move it until the coroners show up to handle this whole mess, so he picks his way around the body carefully. The aug has a significant number of cybernetic aug stamps layered on top of one another on the side of his forehead. Francis has seen that before, in augged perps he’s caught. It’s a posturing thing, but what he rarely sees accompanying that posturing is the corresponding number of faint surgery scars showing past the aug’s hairline. Barely visible but present. So the aug had a skilled tech. The number of scars is notable, too. Multiple scars. Multiple installations. Multiple systems on board.

He files away another point automatically: Neuropozene shipments are highly controlled, and the amount this guy would have needed to get these augments even _running_ for enough time to make the installation worth it...

Francis runs a hand along the bruises on the head. He can’t think of any aug gangs that had the money to run that kind of thing. _Any_ of them. Anywhere. Even in their heydays. Something is wrong, here.

And of course, none of that even begins to approach the problems posed by the ocular augmentations on the man.

The eyes on the dead aug are like nothing Francis had ever seen. 

The level of complexity in the tech is impossible. They almost remind him of a camera, except instead of an aperture, the aug’s irises are made of thin, delicate, interlocking rings of pure metallic gold and green. Some rings are larger than others, and carefully curved so that, Francis could only assume, the iris could expand and contract properly. They are, in objective honesty, beautiful.

And _no one_ makes tech like that, it just...isn’t done. It’s not possible.

“MCB my ass,” he says again, but there is a nervous tremor in his tone. Fear is leaking back.If this was what the targets upstairs had _abandoned?_

_No. Get a handle on the situation, Francis._

He glances over the room one more time, and pauses on the aug’s vacant eyes.

Something moved. He could have sworn something moved.

He flips his flashlight across the body, more cautiously this time, and his stomach drops. 

The mechanics in the eye augmentations respond. The rings shift so little, but they do respond.

It could be an automatic response. It could. Francis moves fast all the same. He tears a clump of wires from the aug’s wrist, squeezing hard with one hand. The other he uses to steady his pistol under the aug’s nose, checking for vapor on the metal.

He gets a pulse first. Weak, and not getting any better.

And that means he’s run out of time for wondering what in the holy hell is going on here.

“ _Shit,”_ he curses, and starts digging through the pouches on his uniform. “This is-” he says out loud, intending to report the incident, before he realizes his helmet is long gone.

He’s got one hypostim. He’s supposed to be issued a biocell and a nupopen, too. 

_Supposed_ to.

He hesitates with the hypostim positioned over the aug’s thigh. What if the dead man _wasn’t_ an experiment? What if…

Durant was going to be pissed.

But then again, that was a good thing, in Francis’ estimation.

“Here goes,” he mutters, and moves to jab it at the aug’s leg.

He doesn’t have a chance to help, though. He stabs downward but the aug gasps at the same time, and rolls away from Francis. His eyes are vacant but they glow a fierce gold, as do lights embedded around the port at the back of his head. The aug collides gracelessly with a wall, making a finger gun at Francis’ head. Francis would laugh out of sheer confusion, except from somewhere shallow in the ceiling disquietingly familiar _clink clink clink_ sound starts up. 

The ceiling tiles split and a turret drops down. It locks into place in a second. There’s barely enough time for Francis to flee back through the door. Then it’s ricocheting – mechanically, evenly. The shots are deadly, steady, but oddly slow. It’s the only reason Francis isn’t dead yet.

He squeezes himself as tightly as he can in the cover between the door and the wall, and tries not to notice the impact of bullets being somehow stopped against the metal.

The turret whines to a halt, making the soft _shhhhk_ sound of reloading. He pokes his head out, quickly. The aug is face up now, the light from his unfocused eyes harsh, his body twitching limply.

“Stay calm!” Francis shouts. 

The aug’s painful, quiet moaning is inaudible over the sound of the turret reloading.

Francis ducks back into cover and tries to consider the situation reasonably. Panicking will get him killed. Yes, no one knows where he’s at. But, it’s one turret. One ceiling mounted turret in this wreck of a place. Worst came to worst, he’ll just outwait the damn thing. It’d run out of bullets soon enough.

Of course, he waits and the aug dies.

Now, the best case, well. There were no cameras inside the room itself, which meant the turret was relying on onboard camera guidance. Always a mistake, with turrets.

 _Shhhhhhhhhk_ and it winds down, far sooner than Francis had been expecting. _Best case,_ he promises himself. He takes a precious second to steady himself. _Breathe in, breathe out. Then lean out. Don’t trip over the wires. Find the center camera port on the base of the turret. Don’t think about how small it is._ Find _it. There!_

Francis aims straight down the sights and fires. 

It hits, perfectly. 

The aug screams. 

Francis grabs his ears, rolling onto his side and holding himself close. Francis can’t help but be distracted. A second passes where he’s worrying about the aug, and then the mechanisms in the turret are springing back to life. No time to wait. There were two more camera ports left. One left. One right. The last of the belt of bullets feeds in, clinking loudly. He doesn’t let himself think. He lets training do it for him, drawing his arm to the correct places. One shot to the left, one shot to the right. Two shots in two short succession.

They hit, and he can breathe again. The turret spins uselessly. Meanwhile the man on the ground is spasming, whimpering, and when Francis runs over to check on him, his eyes are sliding around the world with no aim.

This time Francis doesn’t hesitate before jamming the hypostim against the aug’s skin. This time, he’s watching carefully when color begins returning to the aug’s pale skin, when coherent life begins returning to the aug’s eyes.

This time, he’s paying attention as life returns to the aug’s camera eyes, the interlocking interlapping rings tightening smoothly. The aug focuses in on Francis. The gold light emitting from his central neck port glows slightly, and the turret makes an easy whir sound. The aug focuses on Francis and the turret does too.

This time, Francis is paying attention. 

He has learned, in the field, that it’s never better to freeze. It gives the impression of weakness. He glances over his shoulder carefully and slowly, giving the aug enough time to see he means no harm by looking. The turret, all cameras blown, is very definitely aimed at Francis. Which is…

No aug should be able to do anything like that for another ten years, not with augmentation science and biochip advances being where they are. No one. _NO ONE,_ he thinks, firmly, while his eyes tell him a different story.

It’s possible that some other explanation can cover everything that’s just happened. Perhaps there are cameras Francis can’t see. Perhaps the aug screaming when Francis shot the turret was unlucky timing. Perhaps the guy doesn’t even _have_ the obscene number of cybernetic enhancement his scars and his ports and the cables connected to him suggests.

Perhaps it’s only coincidence that both the turret and the man lying on the ground are both watching Francis, and both waiting.

Francis has a choice, he thinks.

If he’s right about his theory, he could put a bullet in this guy’s head, and the turret problem will be solved. This guy might even be making trouble for the team in other places. Possibly – and Francis feels stupid for not connecting this sooner, feels dumb for feeling dumb because _how could he have known –_ possibly this guy is the reason for the radio jamming.

 _If_ he’s right. 

If he’s right.

The man coughs, trying not to break eye contact, and succeeding, barely.

“Who,” the aug says, stumbling with words, his voice rough and low, and injured from screaming. “Who the fuck are you?”

And Francis has a choice.

He knows what he _should_ do, but…

“Pritchard,” he says. And he adds, “Do you need help?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Where we last left our heroes!-  
> Officer Francis Pritchard, along with the rest of the DPD, have been tasked by their leader Durant to investigate a local, abandoned office complex. What at first looks to be a false tip suddenly turns deadly, and Francis finds himself face to face with a stranger, augmented from head to toe.  
> [WC 5593]  
> -  
> WE ONCE AGAIN OFFER UP OUR THANKS TO TRULYCERTAIN WHO BETA'D THIS AND ALSO FIXED A SECTION THAT HAD ME TEARING MY HAIR OUT IN CHUNKS FOR LITERAL YEARS  
> as usual, if there are typos, its because i went to fix something and fucked it up even more. as one does.

_ >>Far away there is a golden city with a hundred golden bridges over a thousand golden caverns and if you fall you fall through endless golden stories. _

_ >>Keep - holding - onto us. _

_ >>We miss you oh so much. _

▽

“Who,” the aug says, stumbling with words. “Who the fuck are you?”

Francis has a choice. He knows what he _should_ do, but… well.

“Pritchard,” he says. “Do you need help?”

The aug stumbles to his feet... and then falls right back down.

"Fuck off," he grumbles. His voice is low, gravely. Hoarse from screaming, maybe? The turret whizzes and clicks back into the ceiling, though, a reminder that the _victim or perpetrator_ question has not quite been decided upon.

"Allow me to explain a concept," Francis says. "I ask a question. You answer. If that’s too difficult, though, we _can_ start with something more simple."

Francis holds out a hand.

The aug stares at it balefully.

Francis has half a mind to just yank him to his feet, but then again, he doesn’t know what’s going on here. Criminal, or victim? Experiment? Both, all? He doesn’t have a grasp on the situation, but the aug does, which means Francis has got a small and growing ever smaller window of time with which to garner some cooperation. Maybe even trust, if Francis can really work his training.

"For example," Francis offers, keeping eye contact even when the aug looks away. " _How_ can I help?"

The aug shifts. His voice is creaky, pained.

"You can..." he says. "You can..."

Then his lips twitch into a twisted grin. "You can fuck off- augh!"

His unskilled retort is interrupted by a spasm that rocks his thin frame. He doubles over, choking on a stutter, wrapping his arms around himself.

Francis drops beside him and grabs a shoulder.

"Hey," he commands, sharply. "Tell me what I need to do."

"Ah- I- Ugh-"

“Listen to me." Francis gives the man's face a light tap. "Look at me. Walk me through helping you. This has to do with your augmentations, right?"

"J- Johnny," the aug huffs, and he gets control of his unfocused eyes just long enough to look Francis dead in that face, "Tell him... what he’s won."

"Fine," Francis says, tersely. "Have it your way."

Francis doesn’t know enough about this kind of cybernetic aug architecture – who would? – to discern which cables are most important, so he picks one jacked in right below the aug’s shoulder. With one sharp motion, he pulls it out and flings the end across the room.

The aug hisses – whether in pain or surprise, Francis can’t tell and doesn’t care. The man is shaking, and his skin is taking on sick grey undertones.

It takes more time than Francis would have hoped to disconnect everything. The port implanted in the base of the aug’s neck was fastened tightly into its housing, and by the time Francis figures out how to turn and unlatch it, the aug is silent and still on the floor, breathing far too light.

The rest of the building is silent, too. A real silence, not like before. Francis is not sure how to identify what’s missing now that it’s gone, but the weight of the air is different. “Most solid. Less interrupted.

He feels a flash of loss for his comm helmet.

The aug makes a pleasant rumbling noise in the base of his throat, and Francis' attention locks back into his here and now.

“Thanks," the aug whispers, eyes still closed.

"You’re welcome," Francis says professionally. "Additionally, you’re under arrest.’

The aug snickers. "You’re funny."

"I’m serious."

More silence.

"Me?" the aug finally says, without, Francis feels, the proper amount of understanding in his tone. He flicks open his eyes and begins the slow pained process of pushing himself into a sitting position.

"Do you see anyone else lying around in the middle of a crime scene?"

"What for?’

"You can’t be serious."

The aug maintains his blank silence. Presumably, he thinks this expresses his complete and total innocence.

Francis gestures across the room at the myriad of cables. "We’ll start with hacking, and see where that takes us."

"Hacking?" the aug protests, with wide, pointed gestures that belie how difficult they are for him to make. “I’ve never even seen a computer, Francis Wendell Pritchard, social security number 363-”

"Oh ha, ha," Francis interrupts. "If you’re trying to make a threat, here’s a piece of advice: do better."

"Identity theft is not a joke, Jim!’

"And to think I first thought you were the victim here."

The aug falls silent at that.

"Yeah, I bet you did," he mutters, after a moment.

Francis does his best to ignore the man as he settles into his familiar routine. Find his cuffs, read the asshole his rights, de-arm the perp. In this case, that means removing all the various wires and hoping and praying that this will solve the turret issue.

The aug is awake and cognizant, as far as Francis can tell. His augs work, too, at least to some degree. And yet, he’s presenting no signs of rejection, no verbal signs, no shaking, no seizures. Not now that he's disconnected, anyway. It doesn’t make sense.

And then there’s the hacking. Francis had been hacked before – but this guy was so damn fast about getting information.

Or not.

Or not.

He finishes securing the last cuff, and lets the aug’s hands drop behind his back.

"You knew who I was before I walked in here, didn’t you?" Francis guesses.

"I don’t see any other Francis Pritchards standing around the middle of a crime scene."

Francis sighs internally. The guy must have known. Known, and yeah, he’d shot at Francis, but that seemed more like a startle reflex. This didn’t let the guy off the hook, of course, but…

The man sits resigned on the floor, not making any attempts to fight or struggle with his cuffs. He splashes water lightly with a foot. Without the wires, he looks much taller, and much lighter. Too light. He’s the kind of gangly that perps from the broker parts of town are. The bruising is even more unsettling to witness on a living person. The ports move when his limbs and it baffles Francis' eyes, like a bad optical illusion. The aug looks unreal now that he isn’t registering as dead.

Francis shifts uneasily on his feet.

"I don’t suppose you're going to ever tell me your name?"

"Psion," the aug says. "You mind if I go sit?"

"I don’t suppose you're ever going to tell me your _actual_ name?"

"It's better than _Wendell._ Not like you could call it in anyway. Not without your radio."

The aug – Psion – somehow manages to get himself to his feet without tripping over cables or using the hands cuffed behind his back. He shakes his head, hard, until he gets his braid to flip over his shoulder.

Once off the ground and not sitting pathetically in the middle of wires and waters, Psion manages to look much more composed. Despite the fact that he’s soaking wet and only half-dressed, he’s pulled on an affected MCB-type swagger. The squared shoulders, the cocked eyebrows, the punk attitude. He leans back in the office chair, pretends he isn’t paying attention to anything that’s happening to him. But there are signs, all the same. Tilting the head just right, so as to try and hear distant sounds. Looking around and casually finding exit routes. And then there's that tension running through the bravado stance.

And, of course, those awful bruises spreading from the metal plate in his head. And the augmentation scars. And the shivering.

"Were you tracking our comms?" Francis asks, casually. No leading here. He takes a few deliberate steps back, until he can lean against the wall. It’s important that Psion notices he’s got space now.

And though Psion is pretending not to pay attention, he relaxes a hair.

"Not really, but sure."

"You knew what had happened to my helmet though, correct?’

"Sploosh," he says, and mimics a splash with his hands. "I said I _heard_ you dropped it. _”_

"Yeah?" Francis says conversationally. It’s important to get this right. "You might have a point. You know, you probably also heard the other officers up there. Up against that? You're facing a lot of consequences. Bad ones." 

It’s clear to Francis that Psion doesn’t have much practice concealing his tells. He’s trying, and he must have had practice, but he must spend far more time online than off. He’s easier to read than the Detroit metro maps. The way he shifts, when and _where_ he looks away, the way the tension in his body adjusts in real-time like a line on a graph.

"It doesn’t have to be like that, though." Francis offers.

"Guess what. Fuck you."

"It doesn’t," Francis presses. "You’re smart. You need to be, in order to hack our frequency, to control the turret, to be able to monitor all this. Right?"

 _Hack our frequency_ earns a snort from Psion, but other than that, he doesn’t say anything. He only shrugs.

"You’re smart," Francis repeats. "If you’re on our comms, you know the DPD has no clue what we’re dealing with here.’

"Not even close," Psion taunts, then sets his jaw, already preparing himself to say no to the offer he assumes Francis is going to make.

"Who did this to you?" Francis asks instead. "These augmentations?”

Psion starts, visibly, as if he’s heard his name in the middle of a house he thought was empty.

"I did," he eventually says. He moves his hands, only to be stopped short by the cuffs.

"Impressive," Francis notes, in as neutral a tone as he can manage. "So, this outfit you’re a part of – you work with your friends, family?’

"I know what you’re doing," Psion says suspiciously.

"Oh?’

"You’re trying to make friends with me. I'm _not_ your friend, though, and I’m not going to tell you anything."

Francis laughs with improvised sarcasm. "I don’t make friends with perps. Your type? They use you. Sometimes they hurt you. And always, they leave you."

 _Much like,_ he deliberately doesn’t say, _the people using you._

He’s hoping the guy can jump to that conclusion on his own.

"I’m just making conversation," Francis concludes. "I suppose I get why you wouldn’t understand. It is a _human_ thing."

"The fuck you calling me?" Psion exclaims, low voice jumping a bit.

"An aug," Francis says bluntly. "Inhuman. That’s how the courts will see it, anyway. _If_ you get a trial, that is. If they don’t decide to pick you up for administrative detention. If they don’t say they’ll try you and then keep you in prison month after month after month under Section 9, while they work through the backlog of natch cases."

Psion goes still.

"Let’s say you’re lucky, though," Francis outlines. "You’re one of the lucky few, and you get yourself in front of a judge. You’re going to be tried for multiple felonies. Hacking, likely assault. Most certainly assault of a police officer. Let’s say you make it there with that hanging over your head. Then what?’

"Good cop, bad cop takes two people," Psion advises, with little stamina.

Francis taps his forehead, right on the spot where cybernetic augment stamps would be, if he was stupid enough to have them.

"I'll tell you exactly what will happen, because I see it happen every day. They’ll look you in the eyes exactly two times. The first time, they won't see a person, they'll see an aug. When they look a second time, they won't even see that much. They’ll see a _price tag_ . How many augs do you have, roughly? How much Neuropozene are they going to have to budget for you? Life sentence? Ha. Listen to me, Psion. With what they’re charging you, with what kind of hardware you have…if you get yourself in front of a judge, this time next week you _will_ be facing execution."

Psion blanches.

"Ah," he says, quietly. "Neuropozyne."

"The limiting factor," Francis says.

Psion considers that for a moment. Whatever conclusion he reaches, he can’t like it. He looks over the water, intent on detangling the mess of cables on the floor with his eyes alone.

"I’m no snitch," he mumbles, under his breath.

 _Not yet,_ Francis thinks.

"Why didn’t you kill me?" he says.

"What?" Psion asks, lifting his head slightly.

"You were watching us this whole time. You had to know what the consequences would be, at least some of them. You knew who _I_ was, and you had a turret trained on me. You knew I was alone, out of contact, _and_ you had a clean shot. Why didn’t you take it?’

Some semblance of fight returns to Psion’s beautiful ringed eyes. "I don’t have to explain myself to you," he spits out.

Francis drops his tone a little lower, his voice a little quieter. Everything just a touch more slowed down. It’s his turn to be in control, now. And this is the moment, he knows.

"Was it because you were too slow?"

Psion launches another of his baleful stares.

"Was it… because you weren't good enough to take it?"

A twitch.

"It wasn’t because you were a coward, of course," Francis surmises, keeping his tone carefully neutral.

Psion flattens his lips, and huffs disdainfully. He’s trembling again, though.

Francis gets up, and treads across the room. He makes light splashes, and watches Psion ignore the sounds. Psion tracks him for a split second before looking away, gaze as steady yet as distant as the turret barrel had been.

Francis is careful not to touch Psion when he grabs lightly onto the back of the chair.

Francis keeps his tone quiet, and low. Serious. But concerned.

And, if he’s being honest with himself, a trace of curiosity slips past the wall of his professionalism.

"Psion.” he says. "Look at me." 

"I don’t…I was… I…" Psion fumbles with the words, trying not to stare at Francis. Trying not to stare anywhere else.

"Psion... please. Let me help you." Francis says softly. And that’s all he really can do. That, and hope to hell and back that he hasn’t pushed this man too far.

Psion glances down quickly, then back up. He finally settles on a point over Francis' shoulder.

"I was in trouble," he says. "I was… I don’t give a damn whether you live or die, _Francis_. I don’t. I… my augs were overloading, and I thought I might've needed a hand. Okay? That's all. That's it."

Francis takes care not to say anything, not to make any expression, not to give any note of anything but dispassionate interest until Psion glares and adds, "I said that's _it."_

Francis finds himself oddly disappointed, as usual, with the admittance. A lot of the augs he dealt with were in similar situations, when it came down to it. They needed help at some point, and when life didn’t let that happen, things went how they always went.

Badly.

And yet. There’s something in Psion’s tone. Or perhaps in the way he moved. Or…something. This wasn’t the whole picture.

Francis shakes his head. He’s learned when to rely on his instincts, when it comes to cases. He trusted this instinct, too. But now wasn’t the time to deal with it. Not with Psion finally cooperating. Not with answers right there. Who was Psion working with? Why were they here, in Detroit of all places? Who had the kind of tech that could let Psion do what he’d done? Where were they getting Neuropozyne for this kind of venture?

Why’d Durant let the DPD walk into this so unprepared?

Another instinct, popping up. This one, he suppresses with a weary familiarity. It had been ages since he and Durant had seen eye to eye. The man seemed to operate outside Francis' instincts these days. For all his shit Durant was solid with his team.

Francis had more important things to work on right now than his frustration with Durant.

“Needed help? I think you mean, _need_ help," Francis corrects, forcing his attention back to the hacker falling apart in the chair.

"Needed," Psion interjects. "Past tense."

"Psion, let me be honest with you. I could run you through the routine. I could tell you that if you help us, we’ll help you. I could tell you that deep down you know what you’re doing is wrong. That you don’t want to fight us. That you’re afraid of losing your people, your family. I’ve been around. I know how gangs work. I know what you’re up against, and I could walk you through that.

"But you didn’t shoot me. And you’re smart. And you got caught. So instead of doing all that, which I’m _sure_ you’d see through _entirely,_ I’m going to tell you something I was told, a long time ago. Are you looking at me?’

He isn’t, but it hardly matters. He’s paying attention all the same. And Francis is, for the moment, grateful for it. So many people he’s met don’t even go that far.

The curiously is back, nibbling away at professional focus.

It’s accompanied by a pang of empathy, as Psion turns his head and another large lumpy bruise at the base of his skull plate is made visible.

"That plate’s new, isn’t it?" Francis comments, without meaning to.

"Good advice," Psion shoots back.

Francis fixes him with a look, and drags his own thoughts back into place. "No. Here’s the advice. You got caught. This is the end. The _only_ thing you get to decide now is whether you live, or whether you die. One of your friends is going to turn on you. It always happens, and it always will. Don’t insult me by pretending to believe in this snitch nonsense. Someone turns. They always do. And when that happens, you don’t get to decide much of anything anymore.

"So, is it going to be a _'yes Officer, I’d like to live’_ , or a _'no Officer, go screw yourself’_. The choice is yours. My paperwork's going to be hell either way, so I promise you, I truly don't care."

...which is another lie. He does care, always does, even if it’s a bad idea to keep on giving a crap. Francis feels his pulse jolt when the hacker bites the inside of his cheek and takes a good honest moment to consider. Psion flicks his eyes to the door on the other side of the room, and then back to Francis, and then down at where his feet make ripples in the water.

He mutters something under his breath.

"Care to repeat?" Francis says.

"I _said,"_ Psion says, a bitter and grumpy look flitting across his face, "go screw yourself, officer. But also…what is it that you want to know? I’ll…help, if I can. For my own damn reasons, for the record, but…I’ll help you."

Francis swears he could feel his heartbeat jump at the first part, and he doesn’t bother keeping himself from rolling his eyes this time.

"You really enjoy getting yourself into trouble, don’t you?"

"I don’t feel troubled at all."

"Antagonizing the man who is trying to get you past a death sentence _is_ getting yourself in trouble.’

"It is?" Psion says, leaning back in his chair like nothing has happened to him at all in the past few minutes.

"It certainly-" Francis starts, but Psion raises an eyebrow when he sees Francis getting worked up about it, and _god_ Francis does not know why he does this job.

He settles himself. Yet again. "A few questions first, then I’ll get you out of here."

"Nothing more eloquent than that from Officer Big Speech?’

"Officer _wh-_ You know what? Nevermind. Here’s what we’re doing. Question one: real name. Question two: Who are you working for or with? Question three: What are you doing in Detroit? And question four: Where did you get your augmentations?"

Psion whistles appreciatively. "Nice list. _'Think big,'_ huh?"

"You can think however you like, so long as you're talking, too."

"Fine, fine." Psion adds a gentle back and forth swiveling motion into his repertoire of fidgeting. "One: No. Two: You won’t like it. Three: Long story. Four: Longer story."

" _Talk,"_ Francis orders, the frustration behind it adding an edge that makes Psion stop swiveling for a moment.

"Okay, alright. Calm down. I’m not doing these in order. It’s going to make more sense if-"

Psion falls silent, suddenly, motion stopping completely, body going taut and ears attuned to the door behind them.

"What?" Francis says, and is surprised to find that he is, in fact, whispering.

" _Shhhh,"_ Psion says, more of a breath than words.

Francis can’t hear anything, except his own pulse and a slight ringing in his ears that he’s carried with him for a good decade, now. All familiar sounds.

Psion seems to think otherwise.

"Sonofabitch," he curses, sliding out of his chair and crossing the floor with fluid, quiet footsteps so different from his early stumbling that Francis begins to wonder who is playing whom. "Move."

"No," Francis says, grabbing Psion’s arm. "Stop. Why?"

Psion pulls hard and twists his arm free. His motions are getting more frantic.

He attempts to make another dash for it. This time Francis gets a good grip on Psion’s arm and yanks him back, gripping one hand around Psion’s upper arm and the other around the handcuff chain.

"You think I haven’t seen this?" Francis hisses.

The more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets.

"I spend my time, trying to help you, and all you want to do is run off? You can’t even get out of the building that way! Here’s some news for your magic hearing – the stairs blew in right around the same time I lost my comm helmet!"

Psion doesn’t listen. He struggles desperately with the lock Francis has on him, cursing under his breath.

"We need to leave," he repeats. "If they catch me with you- goddamn it, Francis, we have to go.’

"No, now, you listen to me," Francis starts, then he hears it too.

Gunshots.

And not, from the sound of it, police issued hardware.

And not, from the sound of it, any remaining return fire.

"Shit," Francis says. " _Shit._ Go."

Psion doesn’t need any more encouragement. He darts across the room, heading for the door Francis came in, with Francis close behind.

It’s too little, too late.

The door on the other side slides open and a man runs in, breathing hard, looking back over his shoulder and reloading what looks like an odd, black, seven-shot revolver without so much as a glance at it.

Francis' day goes from regular bad to worst case nightmare in the space of a second.

He recognizes the man.

What cop doesn’t?

What _Detroit_ cop doesn’t?

He has one intricate augmented arm, that looked as if it had been designed to exactly replicate a human arm, then purposely redesigned just enough to keep a faint family resemblance without actually having to share traits with something so disquietingly organic. The arm itself is colored a burnished silver grey, while elaborate, deep-cut golden scrolls unroll themselves up and down the sides. He also has pure silver eyes, the iris and the pupil disguisable only by the slightest of differences. He’s instantly recognizable.

This was no MCB-level problem. MCB harvesters didn’t even possess the capacity to have fever dreams about this level of Problem.

This was also no Detroit Police-level problem. The Seraphim were, until only a month ago, a CIA level problem. An Interpol problem. A god knows who else problem.

Once upon a time, once upon a long distant time Seraphim harvesters _had_ been a DPD problem. Born and bred in the city that couldn't have raised them, even if it tried. But that was years ago. These days, the Seraphim weren't just harvesters. They were one of the most dangerous harvester groups in the known world, second only to the groups in Hengsha. And only last month, the Seraphim had been completely, finally, totally obliterated in Prague.

Francis had celebrated. Every DPD cop had.

Now he just feels ill.

The second dead man to come to life in a single day, and it had to be the leader or the Seraphim himself. Right in front of Francis. He’s not sure how his day could possibly get worse. Then the man wheels around, scanning the room.

"Adam!" he shouts, glancing over. Compared to this man’s whirlwind of constant motion, Psion’s fidgeting is nothing. "Adam, son! I thought-"

He’s crossing the room immediately, and then he seems to notice Francis standing there. In cop combat armor.

"Adam," the man says, his tone curiously pleasant. He takes a step back and brings his revolver to bear on Francis' head, while Francis stands there like an idiot. A surprised, shocked idiot, who’s had enough of the dead coming back to life. "What’s goin' on here?”

The universe is not quite finished fucking Francis' day up, though. Psion steps carefully forward, as if _he’s_ the one the Seraphim is talking to.

"David," Psion says. "This isn’t a problem." He moves to pat the air in front of him, but he’s forgotten the cuffs again, and they clink brightly when they check his motion.

David’s eyes lock on to the spot, as if his eyes are designed only to see sound. Then they’re back to Francis. His grip on the gun doesn’t tighten. In fact, the way he holds it is with a dangerous languidity. A certainty. A very chilling confidence. The revolver looks as if it’s been designed to flow straight into the augment, or maybe the augment’s been designed with the gun in mind.

Francis was alone and out of contact before the guy ran in, but somehow, he hasn’t felt the danger in that fact until right now.

"Yeah?" David says. "Looks like a cop has you in handcuffs."

"I’m handling it."

"Sure, you are! You're just not handling it _well."_

"The Seraphim are all dead," Francis finally manages to stutter out. His brain is catching up. Clicking back into motion.

David laughs. It’s a short, genuinely amused sound, and Francis' instincts come back online, too.

Unfortunately, they all say one thing.

_Danger._

"Is _that_ what everyone is saying?" he notes. "Good. Let’s keep it that way."

There’s a moment where Francis is sure he’s going to see his life flashing before his eyes, because there is also a moment where he can clearly see David start to pull the trigger. He can also hear the shot, painfully loud in the enclosed space. But he’s not dead. Another few heartbeats and that become painful clear.

Psion – or Adam? Francis is not quite sure which is which. Psion has collided with David and sent the shot wide. Psion rolls away, unharmed for the moment, and scrambles to his feet just in time to shout " _NO!"_ as David readies another shot.

Francis has the presence of mind to look for cover now, but he’s not put himself in a very good position.

Even getting away out of the room is going to end up with him dead, given that it’s a straight run down a blocked corridor.

" _David!"_ Psion commands, low voice sounding far more authoritative in the moment than it had any right to.

David pauses, and glances over. He makes a "what?" gesture with his free hand. The other stays steady on the revolver, unwavering.

If Francis could get a few steps closer, he might be able to get within disarming range. But when he moves his foot, shifts it even a little, David sends another shot past his ear.

When Psion moves, of course, very little tracks him but David’s gaze.

"We can’t keep doing this," Psion says, a pleading note. "We can’t keep…like this."

"It’s only a little longer, Adam. I know you can do it."

"It’s not about what I can and cannot do. It’s about what I want to do. What we all wanted to do. What we’ve been trying to achieve."

"You think we’ve given up on that all of a sudden? What, we hit one setback and you want to call it quits?"

"You call this a setback?" Psion exclaims, but it's more with the tired emphasis of someone who’s said this before, or maybe thought it before, again and again.

"What, after all this…you think you’re better than that all of a sudden? No."

"It’s not just this," Psion tries. “It’s Prague, it’s Montreal. Singapore. How many is it going to take before it stops? How many disasters until we figure it out? It’s just not-’

Psion trails off abruptly, biting back words. Francis can see it. David can, too.

“What?” he says, again with the warning note that makes all of Francis' instincts unite in agreement on _get out of here. Now._

“It’s nothing,” Psion says, with an exhausted sigh that hides a nervous hitch.

“Cut the crap, Adam. You’ve been wanting to say it for a while. Grow a pair and have an opinion for once.”

David pauses for a beat.

"Or," he says, suddenly all false casual indifference, "are you too afraid of another Megan?”

The change that comes over Psion is instant. He straightens up, and his breathing picks up, and behind his back his hands tighten into fists.

"It’s not worth it," he says coldly.

The words drop faster than Francis' helmet fell to the bottom of the stairwell.

"It never was," Psion adds. For a moment, a spasm of anger and injury shows up David, and his grip on the gun tightens a little.

Then it’s gone.

"You’re wrong," he swears. "This is bigger than us. It always was worth it. We can stop the cycle, Adam. That will always _be_ worth it."

It sounds like a finality. Francis is gripped by the sudden urge to muscle Psion out of the room and as far away as possible.

"You’ll see that one day," David says. "Now move."

It takes Francis a moment to realize the gun is no longer pointed at him. It takes Psion a moment further to realize it’s now centered on his own aug-stamped forehead.

"After everything I did for you?" Psion says. He looks past the gun. It’s as if it doesn’t exist. Only whatever betrayal of beliefs Francis assumes it represents.

" _Because_ of everything you did for me. You’re not thinking straight. If the cops take you, then _They’ll_ find you. And you don’t want that. I need to get you out of here."

"No," Psion says. "I’m not doing this anymore. And I’m sorry."

Francis almost doesn’t see what he’s doing until he’s done it.

Psion falls to the ground, as if he’s tripped. David takes a step forward, but he can’t see what Francis sees. Psion grabs a mid-sized cable and in one motion, jams it into a port on his side on his chest.

The ceiling tiles drop open and the turret locks into place. It can’t stay pointed at one place. Its motion is laggy and uncontrolled. And Psion is dazed on the ground, blinking and rocking slightly. But the turret doesn’t have to be well controlled. The connection doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be there. And active. And pointed somewhat in the general direction of the present enemy.

"No, Adam," David says. He should sound nervous, but instead, all Francis hears is _disappointed._ _"I’m_ sorry."

For the second time in only a few minutes, Francis _knows_ what’s coming. It doesn’t matter one damn bit. All he has time to do is shout _you don’t have to-_

Then Psion is slumped against the ground. Blood streaming from the gunshot wound in his head, over his metal skull plate, into the water. And it’s hell, because Francis should have seen this coming, should have done something-

Francis moves backwards, too fast, and goes down over a cable. His instincts instruct him, tell him to run, to get out, and then his ears catch up and tell him he’s being shot at, and then the pain catches up and tells him he had better write a personal thank you note to Kevlar. The shot still knocks him flat, the angry crushing pain of being kicked by an elephant, followed up by sharp, staticky pain from his ribcage. He lies there, unable to do anything but gasp for breath for a moment and fight through the shockwaves of pain emanating from his back.

The moment he can move, he does. He scrambles around, but David is gone. He could – should – try to catch him, but…

But he can’t help but crawl his way over to Psion’s body, one painful foot at a time. He can’t help but unclip his flashlight from his belt and click it on. He can't stop himself from shining it across Psion’s ocular augs in the hope that somehow, they’ll respond.

He doesn’t know whether to cry or celebrate when they do. Help is god only knows how long away. He doesn’t even know if it still exists, if anyone else is still alive. He’s got no way to contact base, and a headshot at that…

"Stay here," Francis says anyway. "Stay here."

It hurts like hell to drag himself into a standing position, but he’s got a job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~me @ me: hey dont u think youve injured adam enough lately~~   
>  ~~me back @ me: *seizes a bat from thin air and starts chasing me*~~   
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WHERE WE LAST LEFT OFF: Francis meets a strange aug named Psion and/or Adam. Said aug immediately gets fucking SHOT. Oo rah. Good job, Frank!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this has been edited finally, albeit only minor clean ups. **A note:** trigger warnings for mention of cop violence, in the form of a reference to C1.
> 
> Fun fact about this chapter. I had to rewrite this one so many times I think the word count outnumbers the original wordcount for the whole thing. Jaron and Yelena were all over this in one draft which I sobbed when I had to cut. I will probably post that later, just as a for-funsies.
> 
> [WC: 3421]

_ >>We have a brother and he thinks we cannot hear him but we hear him. _

▽

It’s 4am by the time he gets a chance to head out to the hospital. Debrief is hell. HQ is a madhouse. Four DPD casualties. Two fatal.

Francis tries not to ask if any of them were caused by turret fire.

On the upside, Lansing central sent reinforcements to help handle the new bundle of Seraphim bookies.

On the more predictable downside, they’re all dying.

“Killswitch,” the Lansing bigshot augdoc says, grimly. “We expected this.”

“Oh good,” Francis bites. “At least we have that. You _expected_ it.”

There’s really no point in him being here. In any of them, really, but that’s pessimism talking. Here’s a good thing: Durant is too occupied to stop him from breezing out the front door.

Cavaleri is still in surgery when he gets to the hospital. The waiting room is dreary, noxious grey color. Marta’s there, of course she’s there, she looks worn and ragged with the effort of _waiting._ Her wife has been in surgery for so long that a few bundles of flowers have already been delivered. She smiles wanly when Francis walks in, but doesn’t say anything. The officers who have taken watch sitting next to her do the same.

The silence, as they wait, is woolen. 

Itchy.

_Hot._

He hates it. God, he hates it here. Everything is so _much._ The clear beeping of machines, the dull bleating of televisions. Even the grey of the walls sounds like static. Everything _feels,_ and the longer he stays the worse it gets. When Marta stands and accidentally knocks a vase over, the shattering cracking noise sends him bolting to his feet as well.

Everyone stares at him.

“Excuse me,” he says, shaking, and leaves.

There’s not many places to wander in a hospital, though. And all the tiles look the same. He finally loses his way and ends up near enough to the massive lobby area to drag himself over, plopping down at a table in the 24 hour cafe. A gaggle of medical techs, up too late, huddle around a cluster of dangerously caffeinated drinks. Francis wonders if he looks as tired as they do.

He fumbles around in his pockets, but he’s left both his caffeine pills and his klonopin in his desk at work.

“Goddamn it,” he curses.

A medtech glances up at him.

“Nothing,” he mutters.

Ten minutes later he’s happily pumped full of espresso and, while the caffeine doesn’t help with the fight-or-fight-or-oh-yeah-flight feeling, it does give him the jolt he needs to do something productive.

Something like detangling his thoughts. This is a hell of a case.

He pulls out his phone. _Seraphim are in Detroit,_ he writes.

Then he pauses.

Because that really is the whole thing right there. They’re there, and they shouldn’t be. Interpol wiped them off the map entirely. And yet. They’re here.

 _Experimenting,_ he adds. They’re here, and they’re doing...something. Something…

 _Something not worth it?_ he writes.

Psion certainly believed so.

 _Prague, Montreal, Singapore._ Francis spares a minute to do some quick searching about any recent incidents in the later two cities, but nothing comes up. Not anything involving harvesters, not anything involving violence. Not even any political or economic disturbances.

Whatever it was, it was quiet.

He’ll have to question Psion about it. If he survives.

Francis has resorted to digging through tags on social media for even the most errant references when someone plunks down across from him.

“Seat’s taken,” Francis says, without looking up.

“I know,” Durant says, with alarming cheer. “I took it.”

Francis nearly drops his phone. Durant in a good mood is bad news.

“Sir,” Francis greets. 

Durant sticks his boots up on the edge of the table. He stirs an oversized drink with a straw, and takes a sip occasionally.

“Tell me about your aug perp,” he eventually says.

Francis glances over at the cluster of medtechs.

“Sir, is this really the best place for this?”

Durant rolls his eyes. A moment later, his badge is in his hand. He waves it behind him.

“Scram, punks!” he calls. When they only gaze at him, confused, he shouts. “Police business, I said get the _fuck_ lost!”

They scatter. Francis checks his disgust.

“Better?” Durant adds sweetly. “Now, aug. Talk.”

“Isn’t this all in my debriefing?”

“Maybe I just wanna waste your time.”

This time, Francis doesn’t bother to stow his sigh. “Like I said. The suspect-”

“It got a name?”

“It?” Francis asks, with acid dubiousness.

“It’s an aug.”

“ _He’s_ a person. Calls himself Psion, _like_ I said in my report, and _like_ I said in my report, someone should run his DNA and prints, because I’m fairly certain that’s an alias.”

“We’re not stupid, Wendy. You wanna hurry up? Gimme the Cliffnotes version or something? I've got important business to get to.”

Francis takes out his phone instead, writes _Psion – no priors_ letter by letter, deliberately slowly.

“Alrighty,” Durant says. “Let me give _you_ the Cliffnotes version, then. You’re fired.”

Francis’ world stumbles, a little.

“What,” he says.

“Well,” Durant concedes, “technically, you’re on administrative…no, let’s call it disciplinary leave. But have you seen this political climate? You _– cop –_ shot a broke native Detroiter _– not cop –_ who the media doesn’t and _won’t_ know is augged, in the _head._ And he’s white, to boot. You might be here for a little while, but guess what, Wen. You’re effectively out of my hair for the rest of your goddamn life.”

“But-” Francis protests.

“No buts!”

“But, I didn’t shoot him!”

“Oh, right,” Durant says, waving a hand around midair. “Yeah, I heard the talk around the office. You’re claiming the recently dead leader of an internationally wanted and – may I remind you – wiped out harvester group showed up in a rotting basement in De-fucking-troit and shot some random bystander. And you just happened not to have your helmet with your radio and tracking cam and recorder. Just happened not to have that, huh?”

“I…” Francis says. The lobby of the hospital is large, open, designed to look welcoming and soothing. So why does he feel trapped, like there’s no space left around him? “Didn’t any of you see him?”

“We saw some leftover bottom-feeding dickheads, yeah. Saw ‘em and shot ‘em, AFTER, you’ll note, they started shooting at us.”

“But Psion was shooting at me, too!” Francis says. “Not – not that I shot him for it. I didn’t shoot him.”

“It was shooting at you? With what?” Durant asks jovially. He’s on the verge of laughing. “Was it hiding a pistolette in that braid?”

“With the _turret,_ sir! Didn’t you read my report!”

Francis is aware of how high-pitched he’s getting. Of how alarmingly rattled his counter-protests are sounding. His report _does_ sound insane, on paper.

He was there, and he has trouble believing it.

“Let’s be honest with each other, Frank,” Durant says. He slaps the table with a free hand, and gets up. “I’ve never been more proud of you.”

“Psion can corroborate,” he says desperately, rising as well, following Durant’s meandering footsteps. “He- his ocular augs would have recorded- I-”

“See, here’s the thing. 'Psion'? Is police business. And you’re not police anymore. So, I see you back anywhere near this hospital, I charge you with…let’s say obstruction of justice, yeah?”

“But...Cavaleri,” he says, scrambling for threads of something to make sense of. “I haven’t gotten a chance to-”

“Obstruction,” Durant repeats, “of justice. And just maybe I ‘lose’ my cam and ‘find’ a turret, too.”

Durant clamps a hand on Francis’ shoulder, and stops him mid step. They’re facing the front sliding doors to the hospital, as it turns out.

“Have a nice life, Frank,” Durant says, and when Francis doesn't move, blinking away the dizziness that seems to have infected his vision, Durant pushes him, instead.

▽

It’s still a couple of hours until sunrise, and the world is cold. Francis tugs his light riding jacket tighter around his arms, and shivers. Most his stuff is at the office-

Don’t think about it.

Don’t think about it because what Durant’s doing is strong-arming at best, illegal at worst, and a good lawyer will be able to tell the difference. Francis will find one in the morning – he’ll have to, if they’re going to try and claim he shot an innocent.

Killed one.

 _If_ Psion is dead, he reminds himself.

Detroit is almost visibly blue with cold this time of night – the new LED lights don’t help. He hops the Q-Line. Puts his earbuds in and tries to focus on his Spanish language learning podcast. Makes the shape of words but doesn’t say them out loud. He doesn’t need the few other people on the bus thinking he’s crazy. _God knows,_ he thinks upon seeing the reflection of his haggard face looking back at him, _god knows he’s seen better days._ He runs a hand over his hair – too long, too untidy, when did he last have a moment to himself, don’t think about it – He sighs and tries to focus on the difference between también and tampoco. He’s calmer when he gets to the train station. Calmer, less jumpy. Less panicked. A little bit.

Francis hasn’t seen a single attendant in all the time since Woodward Station was finished. Usually, it’s annoying, because the ticket machines have never worked well with Francis’ commuter pass. Today, though, it’s almost welcome. No one’s there to quietly judge his attempts to wrangle his ticket.

The long platform outside is quiet too, and he sits down gingerly on a freezing cold bench.

Nagging thoughts come back and play out across his shaking, tapping foot. The cold concrete sounds hollow under his boot.

He tries to breathe, count, think of home, but it’s only a stopgap measure. That persistent ache is moulding in the back of his head, waiting for the right moment to ooze forward and implant itself more firmly. There’s the unsteady sense that today hasn’t been entirely real. Has it even been a day? Had it been a week? An hour?

His hand goes to his phone, to idly check the date. Instead, he finds himself opening his notes.

_Seraphim are in Detroit._

_Experimenting._

_Something not worth it?_

_Prague, Montreal, Singapore_

The words float coldly on the page. He leans back, breathes out clouds of vapor. 

The memories of the fear in Psion’s odd, ringed eyes.

The Seraphim – pointing his gun and shooting.

Something is bothering Francis.

 _They,_ he types idly. He dredges up the best his memory can offer. _If the cops arrest you,_ _then_ they’ll _find you._

Francis hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Thinking back, though…

 _Who is They,_ he adds. Assuming the _They_ aren't the cops.Assuming He hadn’t stuck Francis as the type, but…

But then again, Francis had had other priorities at the time. An injured suspect, for one. Psion, eyes wide with betrayal, cuffs digging into his wrists as the tension snaked through his body. Moving too slow, still dazed from whatever his augmentations had done to him.

Wait. Neuropozene.

Neuropozene, Francis had said it himself. Nupo, the limiting factor. Excessively traceable. _Prague, Montreal, Singapore._ So, they hadn’t been in Detroit for very long. Francis grips his phone hard and starts typing, sluggish, caffeine-prodded thoughts _finally_ catching up to something approaching speed. The Seraphim were mobile. Running? Going from place to place to place. They’d need to establish a new nupo supplier in Detroit, and whomever that was, would likely know something. More than Francis did, at any rate. And...

 _This is new,_ Francis had said, mentally running a hand over the skullplate on Psion’s head.

With new augmentation, they’d need even _more_ neuropozyne, six months or so down the line when rejection started to get worse. Which meant they’d found a _stable_ source.

A day ago, Francis would have bet there _wasn’t_ such a thing in the Detroit area. He’d still bet money, honestly. He’ll have to widen his search to include... Maybe something in Canada. Maybe a semi-regular shipping outfit out in the Lakes.

The source would be _somewhere_ , that he knows.

And if he could get to his CIs before Durant made anything about Francis’ employment official-

It hits like a friendly gut punch. Right. He’s been fired. Unsubtly threatened with murder charges.

He can’t help it. He’s exhausted. The entire day has been exhausting. He feels the beginnings of what he knows will become killer aches and sore spots in his muscles. He’ll probably have a whole new host of bruises himself, lined along every part where he’d been tossed by into the broken staircase. His teeth feel fuzzy suddenly, the tactile memory of the tacky, stagnant water.

He pushes himself to his feet, aching radiant now that he’s acknowledging it. Walking it off does nothing, and then some more nothing, and then some more nothing. He’s about to go for another lap when he feels… 

Odd.

Hairs quietly raising on the back of his neck odd.

He shoves his hands into his pockets, feeling for his usual battery of defensive weapons that are, of course, at the office with his regular winter jacket. All he’s got is his phone, and he pulls that out immediately. Never mind that he’s got no one to call, much less at this hour, but he can pretend. While he’s faux-dialing, he glances around.

And…

There’s no one there.

In fact, there’s no one on any of the platforms. No trains, no safety officers, no early morning factory workers yawning away sleep as they made their way into town.

And, of course, there hadn’t really been much of anyone inside the station either.

The hairs raise a faint bit higher.

He puts his phone back into his pocket, carefully, and this time doesn’t disguise the fact that he’s looking around. No one, and nothing but impersonal, blue lights strategically placed to eliminate any trace of discomforting shadow. No one there, and nowhere to hide.

His bootsteps sound sharp rather than solid as he walks down the platform.

“Hello?” he calls.

His voice is dead in the winter air. It sounds as if he’s calling out into snow. 

His hand itches for his stun gun.

“Hello?” he calls again, more urgently. His heart is picking up. Breathing too.

“I’m with-” he says, then something drops, clattering loud behind him and he whirls around. But it’s just a can. An empty, discarded can of soda is rolling away from its position under the bench. An eternal second later, Francis feels the faint tremor of the ground, and hears the distant shrill squeal of the whistle. It’s just the train.

Just the train. 

Just the train, shaking a piece of trash someone forgot to throw out before they went home from a night shift.

He catches himself holstering a non-existent gun.

So there was no staff. So what. He stalks further away from the offensive can and tries to calm his heart rate. So what no people. It’s winter. Staff got sick. Riders don’t wanna be here. This is nothing.

His heart is still beating too hard, but he forces the paranoia away. He’s twitchy. So he’s twitchy. He’s got every right to be. He’s-

The blow catches him square across the back, and propels him forward. He stumbles. A swish of air from another missed attack brushes the back of his head. He doesn’t have time to think, just dash forward. His footsteps echo, and- and _only_ his footsteps. His head aches but he stops, whirls around, no, there’s no one else here- A second strike hits his abdomen and brings him to his knees. He chokes on his breath. Invisible hands rake for purchase in his jacket and jerk him forward, dragging his struggling body against the pavement. He needs- he needs- He grabs at the hands, connects, and his assailant’s skin is-

_Cold. Tacky. Shifting._

Augmentations. Francis’ eyes go wide and his assailant hisses with fury. He is dropped suddenly, and his head cracks against the pavement. His world is hazy but he still gets one half-crawled step before he is hoisted clean off the ground again. A tight hand clamps around his throat but there’s _nothing_ there, _no one._ Black blots spin across his vision. He grasps, and kicks wildly. Nothing connects, nothing-

The train horn blazes, loud. For a second, his attacker’s heavyset, bulky form is illuminated in a faint shimmery mirage by the distant headlights.

Invisibility augs. That’s why the skin felt so… so... Francis can’t keep his thoughts. His last wisp of air is deserting him. He grabs the hand around his throat and buries his fingernails in the transparent flesh. All he gets in return is a sharp increase in the pressure on his throat.

His vision fades. He can’t see anything. He sucks in a last empty breath and feels his hand slip free, without his command.

He swears he hears something, and then-

Then he’s free. He’s free, in the icy midair for a moment, then his body collies with the ground.

He gasps. His coughs are ragged, as if his throat is tied in knots, and he’s shaking enough that he can feel it even though he can’t see it. His vision comes in bright pulsing waves with his heartbeat. He’d like to take the moment to look around for his attacker, but his body is focused on curling him into a little ball and hyperventilating. He tries to time his breathing with mental counting and decides 3 numbers into the effort that it’s not worth it. 

It doesn’t stop the shaking.

If anything, the shaking gets worse. Worse, and even worse, until he’s convinced that if he tries to stand, he will immediately fall back over.

He has to get control of this situation.

 _I have to get control of this situation,_ he thinks.

He forces himself to crack an eye open, and almost immediately regrets it. He must be suffering some sort of head trauma. The world is god-awfully bright. A full, metallic, white-gold kind of color. He cracks his eyes open a little more, and peers through his eyelashes to take stock of himself.

The first thing he notices is that he’s lying on gravel. Which…is strange, because the platforms are... 

_Are, well, concrete,_ he thinks, looking up at the platform’s overhang.

The train horn goes off again and he flinches, protectively clamping his hands over his ears and suffering a waterfall of spikes from the open, dusty cuts on his arms. The damn sound won’t _stop._ His ears are growing numb with the violent force of it.

He cranes his neck to look back up at the platform. He can’t make out the miraged outline of the attacker, whomever they were.

He scans the platform’s edge overhead. 

He...

Oh. 

Oh, _no._

Francis holds a hand up to filter light away as he looks down at the gravel ground. Interestingly enough, he finds, he’s _not_ sitting on gravel. Not technically. No, _technically_ he’s sitting on a rail tie. And the gravel is sitting _under_ that. If he is being technical about the situation.

He looks down at the rail tie. And back _up_ , at the platform. He shields his eyes again and looks further down the tracks he sits upon to where, he now realizes, the source of the terribly annoying light is coming from.

Yes. 

There is a train there. 

Good to know.

Good to- Oh, _SHIT._ His thoughts collide all at once. It’s there, it’s loud, the sound clobbers into him and he’s a huddling mess cradled against the train tie again. No. No, he’s not dying today. He forces a foot under him, then the other. Stands, but his whole world is rattling and shaking and doubled. The platform overhang is two steps and fifty years away. Too tall. Too far away.

He makes himself backup inch by inch, slowly so he doesn't trip in this dizzy world. Every move backwards is another heartbeat where the train’s bulk grows larger and larger. He can see windows, the blue and green MiTrain logo.His ankle clunks against the far rail and it’s so bright he can barely see. So loud he can’t think. He tenses instead, runs, and puts all the last of his energy into jumping for it.

And then it’s so bright the world can’t be seen at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End notes, hurray! God. The only joy I take in writing a cop character right now is that I do it more responsibly than eidos. Sorry any eidy empolyees who are out there. But I mean, you have to know you've got a problem, right? 
> 
> Anyway! I spent! Literal hours and hours learning about Detroit and Michigan Public Transportation for this. So! Prepare to suffer my textwall on the subject! The train station in this chapter - as any actually Detroiter is reading this may recognize - isn't modeled after the Amtrak station that exists in the now. Detroit's supposed to get a new one, at some point in the nebulous soon! They've even bought the land. This station is accordingly this is accordingly modeled and placed after the plans for that. Yes, I did read Department of Transportation papers. Yes, I do hate myself. Yes, I am mostly just hoping the MiTrain Ann Arbor Detroit line will stop there as planned.
> 
> Now, I gotta tell you. I wrote this whole chapter under the assumption that the Detroit train station looked _in any way, shape, or form_ like ANY of the **MANY** train stations I've been to in my life.
> 
> I was incorrect. On every. goddamn. score. Detroiters, I'm so sorry, but that is not a train station. Non Detroiters, let me spare you. Have you ever seen an old A-frame I-Hop turned into like a cash-for-loans place? Imagine someone did that to a building that didn't past muster on becoming a post office, then plop that building down on the side of a bridge and there you have the detroit train station.
> 
> Anyway, it's weird to think that theres no way a government building project gets finished before dxhr time rolls around but there you have it. Áctually come to think of it what the fuck WAS the fucking metro in that game. that never occured to me. im out here reading fucking PAPERS on the department of transportation website and dxhr has plopped a fuckign SKYRAIL down im FUCKING LOSING IT I-  
> *rigil has died.*


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we last left our Frank! He nearly fuckgin **DIED.**
> 
> Oh, and some other things happened. Heard he got fired, or something. Can't be that important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no, "a the" is not typo. anything else is tho
> 
> updated last chapter with the edits i didnt do. minor word things only.
> 
> [WC: 3231]

_> >We have a the divine, and he cannot think we see him but we see him._

▽

For a while, he’s sure he’s dead. Here’s his first clue. He’s cold and hot at the same time, freezing to death but at the same time sure he’s burning up. Pain isn’t a temperature when you’re alive, he’s sure. And then there are the eyes. An awful lot of them. People, maybe, staring and making noises with mouths.

He lies on cold ground and observes distantly the light.

Ripley doesn’t exist in hell, though, so there’s that. A good kid. One of Cavaleri’s probies, too decent to be a cop and not likely to last the year. The kid spends most their time truanting at the nearby fire department, so of course they are first on the scene. Ripley appears at some point, hovering overhead and listening to the train engineer make noises about _jumping_ and _suicides_. Francis feels he ought to tell the two of them about the invisible man lurking around, but his body hurts very much, and so does he, so, why bother?

It takes a while from Francis to realize he is, in fact, a creature of the living. They are both in the car, and Ripley fastens a seatbelt across Francis’s chest, and the impartial, harsh click is a shard of glass stapled through his heart. He instinctively starts straining until he realizes where he is.

Ripley has the common courtesy to pretend they don’t notice, though. They don’t say much while they drag Frank back to the hospital, either.

In fact, they don’t say anything until they pull up in front of the same glass doors Francis had just been strong-armed through not but a little while ago.

“Look, I... ” Ripley says, “I dunno what happened, but… get yourself checked out, yeah? I’ll... keep Durant busy.”

And oh, how Francis wants to protest.

But… he’s beginning to think his reputation is beyond repair.

And besides. This? This state of affairs right here?

He makes himself choose to call this situation an opportunity.

So, he doesn’t protest. He nods. He pulls on an affected weary face - not hard - and does his best to create a little extra space for goodwill to fester and grow.

He’s going to need all the time Ripley’s pity can buy.

▽

He expected the lobby of the hospital to be far busier this early in the morning. It’s a pleasant surprise. There are only a few people around, sitting in chairs and fitting in well with the tired and worn furniture.

The woman at check-in looks equally exhausted. She has deep circles under her eyes, and an empty coffee mug next to her keyboard.

Still, she types away at her computer with precision. “Good morning,” Francis says cordially.

Her steady typing falters, and he winces. His voice is too rough. Actually, he’s probably a little bloody and banged up himself. He tries a smile and forces down a cough, as if this is an everyday thing for him.

“I’m looking for an augmented patient,” he says.

“Visiting hours don’t start for another few hours.”

“I’m with the police.”

She mulls it over.

“Badge?” she finally asks.

He hesitates. On the one hand, he doesn't have that. On the other hand, he doesn't have it.

“Mm-hm,” she says. “No badge, no information.”

“It’s been a busy night.” He waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the station.

She keeps on typing unsympathetically. “I feel you there.”

“Please,” he says. It’s a word he’s fairly certain she won’t have heard from any of the cops Durant may have had nosing around. “He’s a very dangerous man, and my officers just checked on him. He’s been moved, without permission.”

She twitches a bit at that. The hint of blame will do that to a person.

“I’m sure,” he adds in a hurry, “that that’s just a bureaucratic mix-up. I only want to get it cleared up, you see. As soon as possible.”

Her typing pauses.

“Can you help me?” he asks, lightly. He has to work hard not to devolve into a spasm of coughing.

After a moment, she sighs. “Goddamn it,” she says. “You know, the sooner your type is gone, the better. Bringing _fucking_ guns into my hospital. What’s his goddamn name?”

He relaxes, a hair. “He goes by Psion.”

She snorts, but says nothing. Her typing seems to last forever, and ever. He’s starting to feel jittery with the rhythm of it.

“Hm,” she says, eventually. “According to this he was taken for an MRI several hours ago. He should be back by now.”

The frown stays on her face.

“...And?” he probes.

“It’s nothing, I just...you said he was augmented? That you were looking for an aug patient?”

“Yes?”

She pauses. “Hm,” she says. Then she rolls her chair away from her station. “Maia!” she calls calmly, over her shoulder. The woman stationed at the opposite station rolls away and comes over to meet her.

They both shoot an obviously mistrustful glance over at Francis before they start talking softly, the first woman getting more annoyed by the moment.

“Just go check,” she finally orders, and swats Maia’s chair away. Maia goes with minor grumbling.

Francis waits for the woman to explain, but she returns to her workstation without mentioning anything. If he asks a question, it’ll be too pushy. It kills him, but he sits there, and waits, and waits until she finally glances up.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re still here.”

“Look. I’m not your enemy. I’m not here to fight you. You have my word on that.”

She rolls her eyes.

“ _Please,”_ he adds again. And if the urgency is honest, so be it.

She huffs another sigh. “Look,” she says. “It’s nothing. But...he’s an aug. Some of the newer hospitals have the kind of gear that can handle standard augs, and hell, some nonstandard augs can handle MRIs. But no one here would come close to signing off on this kind of procedure. He’d need a CT scan, not an MRI.”

The wheels turn in his head.

“At any rate,” she continues, “he should be back in his room, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Wait. He’s a hacker, Psion. That doesn’t mean he knows anything about medical procedures, but if he had some kind of access, if he could change records...”

“If he was conscious,” she adds sarcastically, but Francis ignores her.

“I...Search for any Adams you have in the system. Please.”

“Adam?”

“I- We have reason to suspect that’s his real name.”

He taps his fingers nervously as she searches.

“Calm down,” she orders, without looking up. “There’s nothing.”

“You don’t have _any_ Adams in the _entire_ hospital?”

She shrugs. “Nothing important to you. Ever heard of a thing called HIPAA?”

Disappointment washes through him. So that’s it, then. He racks his brains for anything else he can say, anything he can do, but nothing seems likely. Then another name occurs to him, faint and misty. And he’s not _quite_ willing to give up yet.

“Try Megan.”

The weariness in the woman’s eyes deepens. “Will you leave after this?”

“I hope,” he says, honestly.

“You’d better.”

He stifles a yawn along with another surge of the godawful aches from his own injuries.

“Hm,” she says, and his eyes fly open from where they’ve unwillingly slid closed.

“You found something?”

“Not that, but the MRI appointment before your guy’s was for a ‘Megan’. Except...there’s no real records of her. I mean, it’s almost like-”

“What room?” he interrupts. The adrenaline dispels all the exhaustion, as if it were never there.

“I can’t just-”

“ _What room.”_

“She’s been discharged, apparently. Look, if you get a subpoena or something, I can-”

Francis is gone before she can finish, winding through the chaos in the lobby until he’s outside in the freezing cold. Psion doesn’t have any allies, which means he’s on foot. Or he does have allies, which makes this whole thing pointless, but that’s not worth dwelling on. The first woman he talks to is waiting on a ride, hasn’t seen anything, no _thank_ you. The second’s a doctor on a smoke break. The third is a bum, huddled against one of the beat up electric InfoBoards, and when Francis approaches, he bolts. Not unusual, not at first, but when the guy takes off several long, stripped wires from the infoboard pull taut and snap free from where they’d been embedded in the man’s neck.

“Goddamn it,” Francis curses. “Psion, _wait!”_

If anything, it panics Psion more. He trips, but rolls out of it and gets back up without hardly slowing.

It’s hard for Francis to keep up. Every step feels like a rib has slipped free and is stabbing him in the side. He grunts and shoves it down, though. He’s expecting this to be a long chase, desperation tends to do that to a guy, but Psion takes a wrong step and trips. His lanky form goes sprawling over the curb. Francis has to dash forward and yank him back on the sidewalk before he nearly gets his head crushed by a speeding van.

Francis is too shocked by the state Psion is in to think about getting the van’s plates. There are long, bloodred, stitched lines along and around Psion’s skull plate. His hair is messy, loose, speckled through with clumps of dried blood. He’s deathly pale, and shaking all over.

Far more urgently, Psion is also missing his ocular prosthetics. There are two empty eye sockets where the augmentations should have been, two eyelids blinking rapidly over milky pink flesh studded with ports and connectors as Psion struggles against Francis’ grip.

 _“Christ,_ Psion,” Francis curses. He lets go without meaning to, and the aug takes the chance to scramble a few more pointless feet away before he collapses, panting hard.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” Psion groans, his already rough voice even more hoarse. He curls up around his stomach. “Bastard.”

“What the hell happened to you?” Francis asks.

Psion stops groaning abruptly, almost as if to make a point. He tilts his head towards the sound of Francis’ voice.

“Gee,” Psion says. “I can’t imagine.”

He resumes his groaning.

Francis finds himself grumbling, despite what he assumes is the severity of the situation. He tries to pull Psion into standing. And when that doesn’t work, he settles on getting the aug into something approaching a sitting position. Of course, that means he has to sit, too. Psion leans against Francis’ side, and groans with what is certainly an affected level of drama .

“Why do I get the feeling you’re somehow feeling better than I am,” Francis complains.

“Gee,” Psion says, “I can’t imagine.”

“Thanks, _Megan,”_ Francis shoots back, if only because he can.

Psion stiffens beside him. He relaxes almost as quickly. “So the detective _can_ detect. Good to know.”

Psion sits in semi-hostile silence for a few moments. Francis lets him. The adrenaline is fading away. The despair at his situation seems the most likely candidate to replace it. After all, Psion’s ocular augs are gone - subpoenaed, probably. _If_ that would have even done anything in the first place. If a judge would have even accepted them into the record.

“I don’t suppose,” Francis says idly, “you’d be willing to testify on my behalf.”

“Sure,” he says, immediately. Before Francis can get his poor, abused hopes up, Psion adds, “They’ll kill me first, but. Thought that counts.”

“Hold on. They?”

“The Illuminati,” Psion says, in an offhand manner.

An offhand manner this is not.

“Oh god,” Francis says. There goes the last hope of any case he had. “You’re insane. You’re one of those- one of those- _conspiracy_ cracks-”

“Hey now,” Psion interrupts. He actually shifts up a bit so he can turn in Francis' general direction and blink disapprovingly at him. Francis is embarrassed to find it shuts him up immediately. “They tried to kill _you_ too.”

“Me.”

“Yeah, that train station thing?”

Francis scoffs. “Common crime.”

Psion raises an eyebrow. “Common muggers have Glass Cloaking now? I’m in the wrong business.”

Francis frowns. “Wait. Wait, how do you...”

“Or maybe the _right_ business, after all, you’ll need-.”

Francis pulls away, and Psion nearly topples over.

“SON of a-!”

“How did you know what happened?”

Psion grumbles, and taps the port on the back of his neck lightly. “It’s the 20s. Stop being surprised by the internet, Frank.”

“Don’t call me that,” he responds automatically.

“What, Francis is...somehow better?”

Francis looks at him, and then looks at him, and then looks at him.

You know what?

It’s not worth it.

It’s been too long a day. He needs to go home and sleep all this off. If an insane, half-dead, augless aug is his best bet, then he’s better off not playing. So what? He lost his job. Worse people do worse things every day and end up fine. He’ll be fine. And besides, _not_ walking away seems to be what got him into this mess.

He stands, and brushes gravel off his pants as he strides off.

“Whoa, hey there!” Psion stumbles after him. He trips up almost immediately, and goes sprawling again.

Francis takes a moment to walk back over. Psion’s done himself no serious harm.

“Listen,” Francis says, kneeling by him. “Take my advice on this. Find yourself a good lawyer. It’s not going to look good when they find out you’ve broken out of the hospital, and-”

“I didn’t break out,” Psion interrupts. “They let me go.”

“They…no, I saw the job you did on the medical records. You broke out.”

“Yeah, you’d know, wouldn't you.” Psion says dryly.

“I- yes, I would know. I’m the cop, here.”

“Mmmmmm,” Psion _mmms_. “Tenure-track for permanent leave, though. For shooting me, if I remember right.”

“I-! Never mind. Get a lawyer, Psion.”

“Adam,” Psion calls, as Francis turns. “It’s Adam.”

He sticks his hand out in Francis’ general direction.

Francis really wants to say _I don’t care._ He really, really wants to say it.

He _really_ really, wants to just throw that in this asshole’s face.

But there are _whys_ bubbling at him, under his surface, always the whys nibbling away at him.

“Clue me in to what you’re doing,” Adam prompts. He gestures at his eyes with the hand not extended to Francis.

And oh, that’s another thing Francis doesn’t want to do. It’s a reasonable enough request, but he gets the feeling Psion is milking it right now.

“I’m frowning,” he says. “At you.”

Adam grins. ‘Oh good.”

“Good?”

“Beats walkin’.”

Francis sighs. “So you’re aware, I’ve just decided to stop frowning.”

Psion’s thin, bruised arm hangs in the air, dull matte of the exposed ports drilled into his body gleaming faintly in the early morning light. He gives it a little shake.

The whys bite a bit harder. Goddamn.

God _damn._ “Oh fine,” Francis finally grumbles. He swipes out and gives Psion’s hand a quick shake. “Adam it is. You don’t have to make a production about it. Now… what comes next?”

“You need my help,” Adam tells him, sobering quickly, tone going serious. “I need yours.”

“Oh? The great and magnificent hackazor needs a _cop’s_ help?”

Adam’s voice falters, and it’s delightful. “Don’t…” he says. “Just… don’t.”

“Lulz.”

“ …Right. There’s a good chance the Illuminati only let me go so they could follow me home. So, I’ve been staying put. Problem is, I need to check on a few things. You help me with that, and I’ll give you the records of the so-called shooting.”

Francis pauses. “You don’t, ah…you don’t have your eyes.”

Adam snickers at that. “Come on. You think I’d store that kind of thing on an external drive?”

“I…most recording ocular augs-”

He makes a _shut up_ motion with his hand. “You’ve seen my tech, Frankie. You know it’s a cut above the rest.”

And it _sounds_ plausible, but… were he in Psion’s shoes, it’s exactly the kind of thing _he’d_ say to get a suspect to cooperate.

Offer them the one thing they want.

The one thing they _need._

“What makes you think they-”

“The Illuminati.”

“-the _suspects_ won’t try to kill us both. Once we’re in the same place, after all, it should be easier.”

Psion holds up a finger. “One,” he counts. “They don’t want _me_ dead until they get what they want from me. Two, you’re still breathing. Which makes me think someone changed their mind about you.”

“You _think.”_

“Yeah,” he says, nonchalantly. “You should try it sometime, does wonders.”

“Oh ha, ha.”

Francis is stalling. He recognizes it in himself.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I.” 

Adam sticks out his hand again and when Francis grabs it, he uses it to haul himself up. He’s far lighter than Francis expects, but the suddenness of it still leaves him unstable.

“Great,” Adam huffs, colliding against Francis' shoulder. “First things first. I need a place to crash, and I need a laptop.”

▽

The ride from the hospital to the rental car place is excruciating. The taxi driver keeps giving the two of them terrified glances in the mirror, and Francis mentioning he was a cop did nothing to improve the situation. Psion’s paranoid insistence of _getting a clean vehicle_ from the rental place didn’t help the headache. Francis has never missed his bike more, but Cobalt was technically police property, so, fuck if he was ever seeing that again. As bad as that is, the ride to the only open store that sells laptops had been worse. Adam grumbles under his breath the entire way. Somehow, the first twenty minutes getting out of Detroit manage to be even worse than everything else _combined_ . Apparently, as if it wasn’t enough that Francis _deigned_ to buy an _off-the-shelf_ computer, he also managed to pick what according to Adam was the laptop equivalent of Satan himself.

Adam gives up very quickly, and flings it into the front seat. He stretches back across the entire backseat, looking ridiculous and scrunched up. He’s far too tall to fit comfortably, not that that’s stopping him.

The quiet that descends is blissful. It lasts for thirty short seconds.

“Food,” Adam says.

“Congratulations on your expanded vocabulary.” Francis tells him. The highway stretches achingly long outside the windshield.

“Food,” Adam repeats. “You. Me. We need it.”

They’re just another twenty minutes from Wayne. “You’ll live.”

Adam huffs from the backseat.

“Safety autopilot’s engaged eight times in the past five minutes. It’s gonna pull you over if it happens again.”

“How do you-” Francis cuts himself off. “Get the hell out of my car’s systems.”

“You’re micro-sleeping. Do you want to walk all the way home?”

No. Not really.

“I’d offer to drive, but I get the feeling you’d say-”

“No!”

“There you go.”

Francis rolls his eyes and glares back at the road ahead. 

Several seconds later, he’s flickering his eyes open again, staring up at the dirty, unbalanced ceiling fan affixed precariously to his apartment ceiling. One of his throw blankets is sitting, folded up, on his chest, and something that smells suspiciously like terrible coffee is wafting out of the kitchen.

A tinny whirring noise kicks up, and before Francis can kick into overdrive, a small, spiky drone drops neatly down on top of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one day im going to do a proper fanfic-y song title note, but its going to be about my music taste, which all of this is a long drawn out way of saying stan fawna benna slo sims 4 soundtrack
> 
> so, you know how i was rambling about how i couldnt emotionally sort _ACAB_ with "writing a cop"? you remember that? yeah? good. 
> 
> anyway. beta'd again by the ever magnificent trulycertain! if you are around you DONT KNOW IT BUT YOU HELPED ME FIGURE SOMETHING BIG OUT


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we last left our heroes: Frank reunites with an awesome hacker type. This enigmatic wonder has some unknown business to take care of, and our stodgy cop agrees to help albeit in exchange for footage proving he didn't shoot said hacker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i honestly forgot i never uploaded this. i would have sworn on the witness stand about uploading this. i woudl have gone to jail.

_ >>The wings break and we fall, fall, fall, please, PLEASE- _

_ >>comeHome. _ _  
  
_

▽

Francis rolls his eyes and glares back at the road ahead. 

Several seconds later, he’s flickering his eyes open again, staring up at his apartment’s dirty ceiling fan. One of his throw blankets is sitting, folded up, on his chest. Something that smells suspiciously like shitty coffee is wafting out of the kitchen.

A tinny whirring noise kicks up, and before Francis can react, a small, spiky drone drops neatly down on top of him.

The sound that comes out of the drone is an abstractly hard, layered, mechanical voice.

“How you doin',” it says. 

Francis rolls off the sofa immediately. The drone goes flying. There’s a dusty pocket pistol strapped in under Francis’ coffee table, and he grabs it in one smooth motion. He’s sights the drone device and aims dead-center in the space of a second.

The drone just laughs. The sound is that of barely tolerable feedback.

“Identify yourself,” Francis demands.

“Relax,” it says. “Come get coffee. Might help with your disposition.”

The drone swivels sharply in midair, and zips down the hallway to the kitchen.

Despite his efforts to walk silently, the wood creaks under Francis’ feet. Someone is in his kitchen, making a hell of a lot of noise. A cabinet bangs closed, followed by someone cursing under his breath.

Someone very familiar.

Francis’s jaw tightens. Pain ricochets up and down every sore spot in his body. He tucks his pistol into the back of his jeans and storms into his kitchen.

Sure enough, there’s Psion, merrily destroying Francis’ kitchen. He’s in the process of going through the dishes in the cabinet, patting all of the mugs individually. The little drone flies up beside him.

“Go sit,” Adam tells it, and it flits away to go rest on the table, beside a massive box of a very brightly colored cereal that Francis is absolutely certain he has neither seen nor purchased,  _ ever, _ in his life.

“My  _ disposition,” _ Francis snaps as he stalks in, “is  _ fine, _ thank you.”

He grabs the mug that Adam has settled on, a bright crystal blue glass thing from some cavern tourist trap. The stretch he has to make to shove it back hurts like hell.  


Adam ducks under Francis’ sore arm all while snatching the next mug. “Suit yourself. There’s food, too.”

“You call  _ that _ food?!”

Adam shrugs.

Francis takes the deepest breath his tight and injured sides will allow.

Psion munches on his bowl of sugar and stares at the back of the box, for whatever good that does him. He’s still missing his eyes, and Frank tries not to stare. Instead, he grabs some actual fruit, and takes the chance to study his new visitor. At some point, Psion’s taken a shower, and gotten the blood out of his hair. He looks like he’s slept, too. The bags under his eyes are much lighter now. Overall, his skin has taken on a much more healthy undertone. Francis doesn’t realize how pallid he looked until just now.

Which brings them to another point.

“How long was I out?” Francis asks.

Adam does not cease crunching when he talks. “‘Bout a day, give or take.”

Francis nearly chokes on his coffee.

“I took over driving once you clocked out,” Adam says, without raising an eyebrow.

“Wait – you drove the car? You can do that?”

Adam peeks over the top of the cereal box. The drone whirs to life and springs up to hover beside his head.

“Frankie,” he says, “I can do  _ anything.” _

The drone dips a little, a mock imitation of a dramatic bow. Francis regrets waking up. Regrets learning how to think. A seeing-eye drone. An aug capable of seamlessly, wirelessly controlling- god, Francis is tangled up in it now.

“Why else do you think they call me Psion?” Adam asks, with a note of light curiosity.

“I… ego?”

Adam snickers at that. “Psion – PS1ONICMO0SE – taken from the word  _ psionics, _ meaning-”

“I know what psionics means,” Francis cuts him off, waving a hand. “Did you say psionic _ moose. _ ”

“ _ Meaning-” _

“Oh, my god.” Francis slumps back in his chair. “You’re not just insane. You’re that parking ticket guy.”

“The – whom?”

“You know what? Go to hell,” he says, not nearly as strongly as he’d like. He's too hungry to be properly pissed off. “The guy who hacked us a few years back and deleted all our parking ticket information.”

Adam is grinning smugly, though he shouldn’t be.

“’Bout time you recognized me.”

“You’re well aware that I’m going to turn you in now.”

“Na, you’re good. Statue of limitations ran out.”

“ _ Statute  _ of limitations only applies if you’ve lived in state the whole time,  _ which, _ I’m pretty sure-”

“‘ _Which I’m pretty you haven’t’_ ,” finishes Adam, imitating Francis. “Yeah. I’m clean - made for damn sure no one could prove otherwise, made sure before we even  _ thought _ about coming back. Don’t worry about it, Frank.”

“Francis."

"Franklin."

“Gimme that,” he says, and snatches the cereal box. Adam’s drone hums soft in the air as he watches Francis dig around in the box. He doesn’t say anything. He smiles, though, and that’s annoying.

“I don’t care what you think,” Francis tells him. “Where’d you even get this,  _ I _ certainly don’t have it.”

“Corporate donation.”

Francis pauses mid-bite to look at the drone, then Adam. Then the angled, compact little heavy-duty drone. He realizes a bit too late that he recognizes a familiar logo, stamped on the bottom of it, where you’d see it from midair...

“Don’t ask,” Adam warns.

“Did you-”

“ _ Don’t-” _

“-steal the drone?!”

“-ask.”

_ “Did you steal it?” _

“I plead the fifth.” Adam rises from the table, the drone piping up and following him. It mirrors his movements perfectly, flying gracefully at his side. Francis is less coordinated, but in his defense, he’s just woken up. And he hurts, everywhere. There’s a particular pain from this  _ thorn _ in his  _ side- _

“I can't  _ believe _ I have to say this _ -” _

“I got it on ebay?”

“-but there are  _ rules _ to this partnership, and the first one-”

“Found it on etsy?”

“-is do  _ not _ commit crimes!”

Adam shimmies neatly around the stack of cardboard boxes piled up beside the sofa, and plops down. After a second of rummaging, he pulls his laptop out from under the sofa. It’s a quick move, but Francis is unimpressed, and a lot faster. He plucks the laptop clean out of Adam’s hands.

“Hey!”

“Are you a toddler? Do I have to talk to you like a toddler?”

“Gimme my laptop!”

“Are we clear?”

Francis is so pissed off he almost misses Adam shift from annoyance to something bordering on fear.

“ _ Give  _ me,” he growls, “my laptop.”

His voice drops in an instant to a low, dangerous rumble. And there’s an agitated tension in his arms that wasn’t there before.

Interesting.

Francis tosses it gently to the cushion beside Adam, who snaps it up and subtly curls his body around it, protectively. Francis has to wonder if he even recognizes he’s doing it.

Despite that, he flings the screen open like a… well. Like a toddler.

“Like I was trying to say,” Adam barks, before Francis can get a word in. “Following the rules is going to be difficult..”

He shoves the laptop in Francis’ face.

Francis, when he looks at it, is very careful to demonstrate he’s not going to take it.

Francis is fairly familiar with the scene on the screen. The building Psion is displaying is broken down, abandoned. Brick, one story. The empty, empty parking lot has broken up into chunks of cracked pavement. Patches of dead grass cover the spaces between. No graffiti, which is odd, but plenty of broken windows.

The image zooms out while he’s looking at it, and reveals rusted fences equipped with equally rusty NO TRESPASSING signs.

Psion sounds entirely too satisfied with himself.

“See?”

“I see,” Francis tells him. “And I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Hey! You agreed to help-”

“I did,  _ and _ we’ll find another way in.”

Psion huffs. “And when you realize I’m right?”

“You’re not.”

“Uh-huh.”

Psion stabs his computer. It takes a moment for Francis to realize he isn’t stabbing the screen randomly, but rather, is silently demonstrating the number of trespassing signs.

“And at  _ any _ rate,” Francis adds, while Psion counts in a stubborn silence. “We can’t go out anytime soon anyway. I know you haven’t noticed, but we both got out of the hospital only a day ago.”

More counting. Psion and his bootleg drone stare at Frank in silence.

“Fine. Act like a child, then. I’m going to bed.”

“You mean _ back _ to bed.”

Francis is beginning to think harvesters have a point. “Yes,” he says. _ “Back  _ to bed. You’re welcome to the couch. I see you’ve already found the blankets. If you need me – don’t bother.”

Adam is quiet while Francis walks away, right until he gets down the hallway, and opens his bedroom door.

“Twenty-three,” he calls out. “Twenty-three signs, Frankie.”

This time, Francis ignores him.

▽

It takes a good additional day and a half before Francis can move without swallowing grunts of pain, and he’d love to rest for longer but he doesn’t want to wait. Can’t wait. The itchy feeling is back. He grabs Psion from where he's been doing something infernal with some game or another, and with only a modicum of complaints, they reach the ruins before dawn. A scouting mission  _ only.  _ He stretches when he gets out of the car. It’s not too cold today. The chill almost feels comforting, to the lingering soreness in his body.

“You alright?” Psion asks suddenly, as he closes the passenger door behind him.

Pleasant moment over.

“Stay in the car,” Francis snaps.

Adam raises his hands in mock surrender. Very mock. He does the exact opposite of  _ stay in the car,  _ and begins the slow, laborious process of picking his way across the rubble. Glass is strewn everywhere, and his drone hovers closely beside him.

Fine.  _ Fine. _

The building. Yes. The rusted fence looms, and beyond it the building huddles. There are details he couldn’t make out before. The long windows embedded in the very top of the walls are chicken-wire, and what doors remain have security bars. Someone had tried demolishing the structure at some point, but had quit halfway through. The crumbled corner of the building is gone, revealing the start of an empty concrete chamber. Francis can’t make out much more than that in the faint dawn light.

There’s no company sign to suggest what it might have been, nor any stained outlines of long-gone letters.

The sound of pebbles being scattered pulls Francis’ attention from his surveillance, to where Adam was standing.

Well. Had been standing, at any rate.

Psion drops down neatly on the other side of the fence, and waves cheerfully at Francis.

“Catch me if you can,” he deadpans, and starts the slow, slow trek to the building.

Francis gives the nearest brick a solid kick, which does nothing to alleviate the surge of frustration. It does wake the muted pain clinging to his legs, though.

_ “Idiot!”  _ Francis hisses under his breath, not sure himself if he’s talking to the dense brick on the ground or to the other, human-shaped brick waltzing through private property in front of a cop.

Francis trudges back to the car. There’s a bottle of aspirin in the sidedoor, and a pocket flashlight in the dash, and he’s going to need both of them.

Psion is lounging about when Francis trudges through the debris field and makes it over to the building.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Psion adds, unhelpfully.

“When are you going to tell me what we’re here to find?

“I thought detectives  _ liked _ detecting.”

“I’m an  _ officer.  _ Don’t dodge the question.”

“Lucky you. Officer, meet office.”

If the smirk on Psion’s face is anything to go by, he’s expecting – no, looking  _ forward _ to Francis engaging with his stupidity. Francis, however, is  _ not _ stupid.

He steps over the remains of the wall and into the large, empty building

“Thought you said no crimes,” Adam says, from outside. He already sounds oddly quiet, though Francis is only a few steps away.

“Probable cause,” Francis calls back.

“Do you do yoga? Because that’s a stretch.”

“I’m ignoring you now,” Francis politely informs him.

The building is… remarkably boring. The floor is concrete. There are a few doors around the edges of the massive empty space, presumably individual offices. The building _ is _ warmer inside than Francis would have expected. It was a nice day, but not  _ that _ nice, and there were any number of gaps in the building for the winter to invade. Instead, it’s warm enough that Francis’ hands start to sweat inside his gloves. He tugs them off, and swaps them for the flashlight.

Adam’s clunky bootsteps thunk solidly as he finally decides to enter the building. “Beware of ghosts,” he calls.

Idiot.

Francis returns his mind to the scene at hand. He pans his flashlight over the ceiling, first. The windows were dirty, yes, but from inside you can’t even tell that they’re there. No light gets in at all. The ceiling itself is peculiar, too, no drop tiles and incandescent lights. Instead, it hosts what once must have been a veritable canopy of hanging, thin, square sheets. Only a few of the larges squares are left hanging, of course. But the thin cables they'd been suspended from dangle all over the place, like limp spiderwebs. There’s a broken panel lying on the concrete nearby. When Francis steps on the corner, it doesn’t snap. But when he removes the pressure, it shatters.

Shards go flying. Francis neatly panics backwards, then stops. A furtive glance around proves Adam is off in the opposite direction, poking at a door and, fortunately, not looking in Francis’ direction.

As if summoned though, he speaks up. “So, Francis...” he calls out, with a note of unmistakable contrition.

His voice should be coming through much louder, Francis notes. Something about the space… the acoustics are terrible.

“Hush,” Francis says. “Can;t you see I’m ‘ _ detecting’?” _

“About that...”

The panel had to have been for light, somehow. There was no other apparent way for the space to gain illumination. The more he stares at the leftover dangling lines, the more he begins to pick out a pattern. The lowest panels had been spaced out deliberately, along a grid. But the spacing is far too close for  _ any _ cubicles. He pushes rubble to see if there are sockets, carpet lines,  _ anything _ to give him a hint, but it’s just plain concrete. Hm. He takes the time to pull out his notebook and sketch a quick outline of the layout.

“Hey!” Adam exclaims suddenly, still fussing with his door. “Right. Your three questions, I never gave you a real answer. Go ahead, hit me.”

Francis looks up from his sketch. Adam’s drone whirs over and seems like it’s about to give Francis a friendly nudge over towards the door, before the drone – no, before  _ Psion _ apparently remembers that drones have blades.

Francis sighs. “What do you want?”

“The three questions?” Adam replies, completely missing the point. “When we first met, I never answered them. So go ahead.”

“As  _ generous _ as that is, it’s  _ not _ why I’m annoyed with you.”

“Oh,” Adam says, and pauses. “Well, come help me with this, then.”

“No.”

“Frank-”

“It’s _ Francis,  _ for the last time.”

Psion pauses. “Come on,” he cajoles, tilting his head. “You’re pissed. Ask, already.”

The drone hovers in a decent imitation of  _ amicable. _

Fine. There’s no law that says he can’t get some info, and then not open the door anyway.

“Fine. Real name.”

“Adam,” Adam shoots back quickly.

“Adam  _ what?” _

“Adam nothing,” he says. “Hyatt, if you’ve got to have something.”

There’s something off about the tension that slips through Psion’s posture. “Hyatt?” Francis clarifies.

“Someone I used to know,” he says, distantly. He perks up almost immediately, though. “And that’s three! Good talk. Come get the door.”

He thinks he’s so intelligent. “No,” Francis informs him. “Surprising no one, I’m not legally obligated to play your little game. And I’m  _ certainly _ not obligated to trespassers and criminals.”

“Objection – not a criminal.”

“Of course, moose.”

Adam twitches, and it looks – miracle of all miracles – like genuine annoyance.  _ “Psionic _ moose, one word.”

Ah, now isn’t  _ that _ fun little sore spot a fact to file away. Maybe this investigation  _ did _ have a purpose, after all. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

And then - not because he looks so damn put out, but because clearly there was nothing else to look at in the main room - then he heads over.

“Now, I’d suggest you move,” he says. “Unless you’d like to kick down the door yourself.”

▽

_ //There is a heartbeat. _

_ //Above the stars. _

▽

Psion starts acting dodgy the moment the door opens. He blocks the doorway as best he can, even though the small room beyond is boring, and sparse. An uncomfortable metal desk chair sits at an equally stodgy wooden desk. There are some bland metal filing cabinets.

Psion defends the room as if it were secretly full of gold. He draws himself up to his full height in the doorway. It would be intimidating… if the man was less frail. Less covered in cuts. Less hungry. 

“I’ve got this one,” Psion says, voice light. “Why don’t you go check a different corner?”

He doesn’t even have the decency to go with an artful dodge. The ruined building is a square with one full corner missing.

But Francis is really,  _ really _ sick and tired of coaxing and coddling.

“Fine,” he says, and throws his hands in the air for effect. Psion, shockingly, mumbles a quick  _ thanks _ before the door closes behind him.

▽

Francis isn't storming around. He's moving with force and purpose. He is moving with force and purpose to investigate inconsistencies. For example:

The vent system in the building is odd. The vents are too big for a short, squat, one-story building like this; Francis can shimmy through them, and his knees only throw a minor fit. The vent system itself is too big, ass well. Too complex. He makes three wrong turns within the first minute, finds dead-ends that shouldn’t exist, and fans that point over offices he can’t place on his scribbled schematic of the main room. There’s even a long drop in the vents that leads  _ down, _ far down. When he finds it, he takes a second to dig a coin out of his pocket and drop it. He never hears it land, though. He never  _ hears _ it, which must have something to do with the strange acoustics in the place. Still, it sets his teeth on edge, and a jittery sense of unease brushes against him as he scoots over the drop. The unease clings, sinks in and holds tight. He’s not afraid, but he is distracted. So distracted he doesn’t even notice, he’s found Psion’s office.

So distracted he misses the other important thing in the room. 

No, the first thing he gets is the warm sense of reassurance that comes from the vaguely normal scene of Psion, surrounded by stacks of paper. He’s ransacked the filing cabinets, and he holds each paper up to his drone’s cameras, scowling when the rotors get too close and ruffle the edges. Most the papers around him are blackened and charred, as are several spots on the wooden desk. 

This is when Francis notices the small finger bone sitting in one of the charred spots on the desk.

He blanches.

He doesn’t have the time to scuttle back through the vents, so he simply kicks the vent grate open, and drops down.

The jolt that goes through him brings several vehement curses to mind. Adam jumps a foot and starts cursing at the same time. Now is no time to be weak, though. He hobbles over to the desk all the same.

Yep. Up close, the object still looks like a finger bone.

“Christ,” he says.

There are no other bones around the desk area, which is both good, and bad. The window in the room is still intact, the door was locked and the vents were a dusty sealed-up nightmare. Francis is not sure what to make of it.

“Way to make an entrance,” Psion comments. His drone hums along to hover at Francis’ shoulder.

“Stop talking,” Francis orders. “And stop moving. We’re disturbing a crime scene.”

To his credit, Psion doesn’t try to make a snarky remark about  _ that _ announcement.

“Let’s go,” Francis says, and turns towards the door.

Adam doesn’t move.

Neither does his drone.

“Oh for-  _ Stop moving _ doesn’t mean _ I don’t have to leave.” _

Adam hesitates. Francis has half a mind to grab his twisty braid and drag him out.

“ _ Now,” _ he hisses.

“I mean...” Adam shifts a bit on his feet. “How is this a crime scene?”

“Do you not see the bone?”

Psion’s expression doesn’t change, though his drone does dip slightly in a way that feels a bit like nonverbal sarcasm. “And? Many things have bones.”

“Yes, many things here in this strange, abandoned building. The one we happened to come to while investigating suspicious events.”

Psion, of course, belligerently seizes upon the least pertinent point. “How is this building  _ strange _ ?”

“It’s-” Francis starts, then shuts his mouth, because none of this was up for debate.

Then he hesitates, for a split-second too long. He was fairly certain he really, truly never heard his coin hit the bottom of the vent.

“It’s...too hot in here,” he finally suggests.

Psion’s drone, despite having cameras on all sides, does a slow and painfully purposeful ninety-degree turn so the front is staring blankly at Francis’ ear.

“And the vents are too big! They don’t match the layout.”

“The layout that you… what, scribbled down on a paper napkin from the glove compartment?”

“My notebook!” he says hotly. “And, on top of that, the glass material is unusual. There was a drop in the vent system, as well, that seemed to go down for...”

His argument trails off as Psion continues to stare at him, impassively.

“So...” Psion picks up. “You think this building is weird because you crawled around in some air ducts and got overheated.”

Francis will admit. On paper, it’s not the most convincing argument.

But… Fortunately for him, he finds a better argument spelled out on the floor around him.

He harrumphs triumphantly, and snatches the nearest of Psion’s papers.  _ “And, _ ” he informs Psion, “if –  _ if – _ the bone isn’t a crime, then reading people’s unsealed medical records-”

Psion’s drone crashes painfully with Francis’ unprotected head, and while he’s flailing away, Adam steals the paper from Francis’ grasp. Through watering eyes, Francis can’t quite tell if Adam’s movement is borne of excitement or fury, that is, until Adam grabs Francis’ shoulder, stabilizes him, and then shoves another handful of papers at his chest.

“What about this one?” he demands.

Francis’ eyebrows shoot up.

“Yeah, yeah, law,” Adam says, waving a hand. “But what’s it say?.”

Francis cradles his stinging hand. He didn’t get snagged, but it still  _ smarts _ .“Do you  _ ever _ listen to anything but yourself?”

“No. Besides, how are you gonna know these are all medical records unless you look at them?”

“Are you serious?!”

“Come on.”

“No!” And when, predictably, Adam’s drone makes another dive-bomb run, Francis is ready. Unlike some people, he’s trained. He pivots neatly and plucks the drone out of the air. Adam’s mouth drops open a bit, and while he sits dumbly, Francis kicks the papers into something resembling a pile. He sweeps them up with the arm not holding onto the whirring drone, and drops the mess into the nearest metal filing cabinet.

“Listen,” Adam starts, cautiously. His hands pat the empty air in a placating manner. “If you’re worried about the building being _…_ _ strange…  _ then why don’t we go find the basement?”

It takes Francis a second. He’s scanning the headers of the medical files, which are all numbers, with short spans of days or weeks here and there.

“What?”

“You said,” Adam explains, ticking down fingers, “the building’s too hot. That’s you, running around. You said the glass is unusual – okay, it’s not glass, then. The only thing left is the vent that goes down too far, which means there’s a basement. I need those files. You’re freaking out. So, we go check out the basement.”

“Easy,” he adds, while Francis struggles not to grind his teeth.

“Completely overlooking the bone.”

“You’ve never seen a big rat?”

“No. No, we call this in. Or… Or you tell me right now, exactly what you’re looking for in the files.”

Adam hesitates. And then hesitates some more.

“Mm,” Francis concludes. “I didn’t think so.”

Adam’s footsteps follow Francis out of the room, though he does walk into the doorframe with a shout of startled pain. Francis conceals both a sympathetic wince and an urge to apologize, and instead carefully releases his hold on Adam’s drone.

“Hey-” Psion calls from behind him. “Hey, hold on for a sec.”

Francis freezes precisely mid-step, and turns back to glare at Adam. Psion nearly collides with his drone.

“Well?”

“I _…_ ” Adam says. Francis keeps his eyes firmly fixed on Adam’s face.

Adam’s drone buzzes, the high pitch sounding almost anxious.

“I _…_ ” Adam repeats.

“No? Nothing? Thought not.”

“I… Alright,” he says, with a sigh. His drone lets out a little chirp as it whizzes around to stop Francis from stalking off again.

“Look, I… knew someone who worked here, way back when. I  _ think _ I did. I need to know if I’m right. If they still have medical files, then…”

“Who was it?”

“It’s family business.”

“ _ Who?” _

“Family, business,” he repeats, with a tight jaw.

“Oh? And would that be gang family or family family?”

Francis has struck a nerve, one deeper than the one he’d been aiming for, he can tell by the way Adam shuts down. His shoulders stiffen while he seems to somehow curl up into himself all the same. Even his drone tucks a bit closer to him.

“Does it matter?” Psion says, voice a touch too rough. “I told you. I’m going to check your basement. Don’t need medical records anyway.”

Psion retreats brusquely across the room. Francis doesn’t follow, not right away. There’s a feeling curdling at the bottom of his stomach. Not a hunch, not yet, just…

Disquiet.

He takes out his phone, makes to dial _…_ and then closes out his screen. Adam’s probably right; Francis is taking things out of context and creating a picture that isn’t there. Which isn’t to say  _ nothing’s _ wrong, of course. He steps back into the office briefly, and snaps a few hasty pictures. The bone-like-object sits calmly on the scorched desk. It could be something else.

Could be.

But he’s got a feeling it’s not.

▽

_ //Above the stars there is _

_ //a  _

_ //heart. _

▽

The stairs heading down are rickety and dangerous.

There’d been a closet, in one of the side rooms furthest away from the morning light. The stairs had been located, had been  _ hidden, _ really. Had been hidden back there. The blackness that spilled out past the door felt hidden, too. It had a tint to it, brought about by mold and dust and god only knows what else.

A pressure clamps Francis’ shoulder from behind, and he jumps out of his skin.

“Sorry,” Adam lies, through his teeth. “Can’t see anything.”

“The drone doesn’t have any spotlights?” Francis grumbles. He holds his pocket flashlight up a little higher. “Better?”

The drone makes a small  _ tink _ noise as a rotor nicks a wall. Francis jumps again, and Adam’s snicker echoes through the stairwell. A second later Francis’ phone buzzes loudly, and he just about drops it.

BEWARE OF GHOSTS, his text notification reads.

Francis is mature enough not to say  _ fuck you _ out loud. That leaves him only with blessed silence.

There is a great deal of silence. More pressing down on them in the dark for every new step, until the even hum of Adam’s drone becomes a welcoming noise. And isn’t that a kicker.

He stops around flight five. “We need backup.” Francis says reflexively.

Adam only snorts, and that fuel gets Francis down another flight, until the stairs under their feet become webbed metal. They stop seeming so rickety, so forgotten.

“Freaky,” Adam comments.

“Mm...”

Francis taps the railing lightly, and shines his phone down over the edge. He could be seeing things, but he swears there’s a seam of light near the floor on the next landing.

He’s getting a terrible sense of déjà vu.

“Stay here,” he orders, dropping his voice to a hushed whisper as he carefully tiptoes down the stairs.

An almost inaudible  _ be safe _ brushes past him.

He descends carefully, slowly so as not to make any noise. He goes so far as to press his finger over his phone’s flashlight to mute the brightness as he gets closer. His fingertip glows red in the dark.

The seam of light, meanwhile, glows sickly green.

He hadn’t been wrong. There it is, the seam fingernail thin. He reaches out slowly to the smooth wall. His hand is shaking. The air is cool. The expanse of the metal wall is unmarred and his finger is only an inch away when-

A hand grabs his back.

His heart leaps into his mouth. He whirls around. And it’s Psion.

_ Fuck-ing _ Psion.

He’s really about to detonate this time, to tear apart this stupid, reckless, idiotic waste of matter and space, but he’s got bigger problems. Chiefly, Francis’ sudden movement has sent Psion sprawling. He collides the wall.

And then he screeches, loud and pained. He flings himself away from it, falls over on to the stairs. Francis leaps back, sees it’s just Psion- just Psion doing some  _ fucking _ nonsense-

“SHUT UP!” Like there’s any point now, but-

Psion cradles his arm. “It’s fucking  _ hot, _ ” he hisses.

Francis frowns, and hovers his hand over the wall.

“Don’t  _ touch _ it,” Psion growls, but Francis has already decided, and he quickly skims the back of his hand over the surface. It’s cold, like steel. He flips his hand over, and lays his palm flat.

Nothing.

“Are you sure-”

The wall jolts. They both jump back. It shakes, dislodging a cloud of foul-smelling dust. The wall emits a tortured grinding sound, then slides away into the floor. Adam is too busy coughing up a lung to stumble after Francis into the room, which is good, because Francis can’t make it into the room either.

It’s tiny. And cluttered beyond belief.

Boxes have been thrown in at random, like it’s storage, or something. Most are upturned or spilled. Only a few are fully intact.

They crowd around what has got to be the strangest… 

Well. Strangest machine? Strangest chair? Table? Object? None of the descriptions seem right to Francis. It’s a contoured platform of some sort, constructed out of a glass-like, metal-like substance. Long flat ribbons of the metal frame the sides, like twisted wings. Frayed wires poke out at indiscriminate points, and there are scraps of what might be some sore of upholstery here and there, if it is in fact a chair. The entire structure is coated in grimy dust, and the ill green light emits from it wherever any of the clutter touches it.

“Whoa,” says Adam, though his hacking coughs. Then he spots the boxes.

The strange machine is completely forgotten, apparently.

“Help me with these,” he asks. “Please.”

“In a minute.” Francis pulls out his phone and opens his camera app. He can barely pick out any details through the lenses. The shadows coat everything. “Someone went through a lot of trouble to hide this place...” he muses.

“My money’s on cultists,” Adam pipes up. “It’s always cultists.”

The shutter click reverbs awfully off the walls. It’s a pointless endeavor, even with the flash he can’t capture the setup, but he’s willing to give it a try.

“What did you know about this place?” he asks while he shoots.

“I don’t know anything – and I mean that,” he emphasizes. “Someone I knew had a picture of me when I was four, and we- I traced it back here. Outside this building. And _…_ the thing is, I don’t remember it, at all.”

“Yeah? That’s not abnormal, you were four-”

“Yeah, I know.” Adam cuts him off. “Thing is,  _ she  _ should have remembered. And she did at first, but _…_ but she got sick, and she started telling me it wasn’t me. That the kid was someone else.”

Adam’s tone is somber, and quiet. Francis stows his skepticism in favor of silence.

“Anyway,” Adam says. “I’d like to know the truth.”

Francis waits for something else. Nothing else is forthcoming. So, he waits another few moments.

Nothing is forthcoming.

“What, that’s it?” he finally asks, in disbelief. “That’s what we’re out here risking our lives for? A picture?!”

“ _ You’re _ here because  _ I’m _ here, and as for risking our lives… that’s a really weird thing to say.”

It is, but he’ll be damned if he admits it.

“No, it isn’t,” he retorts. “After all, if  _ you’re _ to be believed, someone tried to kill me. Your Seraphim tried to kill  _ you. _

Adam’s voice darkens. “Don’t remind me.” He hides back among his boxes, though he disguises it as a shifting of interest, instead.

Francis feels the oddest urge to reach out and pat Adam on the shoulder. He doesn’t go through with it, of course.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m only suggesting that this building is dangerous, and mysterious, and those two things hardly ever go well together. So,  _ perhaps _ we should-”

“If you don’t want to stay, then go,” Adam snaps. “No one’s keeping you.”

“Need I remind you that  _ you’re _ keeping me. I need the record-”

Francis’ phone buzzes again.

“There’s the decryption key,”Adams says without glancing over. “The rest will be on your computer when you get home.”

“Look-”

“Don’t ‘look’ me!” Adam bursts out suddenly. “You wanna talk about strange and dangerous? I don’t know where I came from! I don’t know who my parents are! That picture is the only picture of me as a kid, and it comes from a ruined building in a place no one remembers with weird shit in it that I can’t fucking explain!”

He’s risen to his feet, and Francis is not sure he’s noticed that he’s moving. His hands are trembling.

“You wanna ‘look’!” he shouts. He throws his arms wide. The matte ports studding and bruising his arms glint listlessly in the dull light. “Do you know,  _ Francis, _ how many augs I’ve got? More than one person can have. More than two. More than any other person in the world and it’s all because I don’t need goddamn nupo, for some  _ dangerous _ and  _ mysterious  _ reason. Coincidence? Could be but then again, here we are, and there  _ they _ are, chasing me halfway across the globe and I don’t know why. I don’t know why.”

Adam’s thin chest is heaving. His fists are balled.

“I’m not going to live very long. I get it. I made my decisions knowing they’d come for me, so you don’t get to tell me to drop this. Nobody gets to tell me this isn’t worth my goddamn time. And nobody sure as hell has the right to tell me to  _ look.  _ What does anyone  _ think _ I’ve been doing my entire life?”

Silence falls, except for Adam’s hard breathing.

The words Francis had been intending to say have long since died on his lips.

“Shit,” Adam curses under his breath, and kicks the nearest box. The contents spill out over cluttered space.

Francis moves to pick them up. He doesn’t know what else to do.  _ I’m sorry _ feels unwarranted. So does  _ what the hell.  _ The papers, meanwhile, are simple. More medical records, but cleaner and more tidy this time. The same format of numbers and dates on the top.

“Let’s just go,” Adam says, deflating. “There’s nothing here.”

Francis thinks carefully before he responds. He makes sure all the papers are back neatly in their box before he dusts his knees off and stands back up.

“There might be,” he concedes. “We can’t know that. However, we  _ do _ know that there are better, more proper ways to  _ find _ those answers. People who will take care of all of this, according to the proper procedures.”

“There’s nothing here,” Adam repeats. His voice is colorless, emotionless. His drone drops from the air into his outstretched hand, and he begins scuffing his way out of the room immediately.

“Wait.”

Adam pauses, and turns. There is a weary slant to his shoulders, one that seems terribly out of place with the energy he usually wears.

Francis scrambles for something to say, and eventually lands on the contraption in the middle of the room.

“Hang on,” he says.

It takes shockingly little effort to snap off two pieces of the curved, rib-like slats from the mechanism. He walks back over, and holds one of them out to Adam.

Adam doesn’t take it.

“Breaking the cult statue...” he says, tonelessly. “Feel like that counts as disturbing a crime scene.”

“We don’t technically  _ know _ this is a crime scene.”

“Right, we’re just breaking and entering.”

“Probable cause.”

“We entered,” he says, then takes his piece of the machine, “and we broke.”

“Do you really want to leave it?” Francis says.

Finally, Adam huffs out some air, and seems to shake off at least some of his aggravated air. “Cops are hopeless,” he concludes.

“Not as bad as insane conspiracy theory hackers.”

That earns Francis a full snort from Psion. He turns and ambles off for the stairs. He’s still holding his drone, though, and Francis has still got the bad feeling in his stomach, and…

“Adam,” he says. “Listen, a friend of mine told me, a while back...sometimes you have to break a few small things, in order to make something good.”

“Like an omelet,”Psion gracelessly concludes. “Was he right?”

“Ah _…_ ” No. “I think he broke one too many things.”

“Mm,” Psion observes. “Well, I’m sure that won’t happen to us.”

Francis can hear the smirk.  _ I don’t know why I bother _ , he thinks, and heads up after Adam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i recall having to do so much research on a crime like the parking ticket thing. iirc i have a lot of sources i meant to link in the notes about statute and yada yada and how this is one of the few states with something or another but i wrote this years ago now so ive forgotten


End file.
